© 2013 Loren Zemlicka
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Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,
Come floating downward in airy play,
Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd
That whiten by night the milky way;
There broader and burlier masses fall;
The sullen water buries them all–
Flake after flake–
All drowned in the dark and silent lake.
– Excerpt from “The Snow-Shower” by William Cullen Bryant
© 2013 Loren Zemlicka
… not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
– Excerpt from “The End” by Mark Strand
© 2013 Loren Zemlicka
The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
– Excerpt from “Snow-Bound” by John Greenleaf Whittier
© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
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Slip into the autumn shade
I could sleep for days
But I like the sun when
I can hear another sound
It’s a long way down
Keep my head up
Who am I to be this way
Dreamin’ so insane
But I like the sun when
Fallin’ through another plain
Never one the same
Keep my head up
– “Autumn Shade” by The Vines
© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
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Yellow fall roars
Over the ground.
Loud, in the leafy sun that pours
Liquid through doors,
Yellow, the leaves twist down
Glowing in wind and change,
The orange leaf tells
How one more season will alter and range,
Working the strange
Colors of clamor and bells
When autumn gathers, the tree
That the leaves sang
Reddens dark slowly, then, suddenly free,
Turns like a key,
Opening air where they hang
One of the hanging leaves,
Deeply maroon,
Tightens its final hold, receives,
Finally weaves
Through, and is covered soon
Holding past summer’s hold,
Open and strong,
One of the leaves in the crown is gold,
Set in the cold
Where the old seasons belong.
– Excerpts from “A Crown of Autumn Leaves” by Annie Finch
© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
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“Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born ;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.”
– Exerpt from “The Garden of Proserpine” by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Via Flickr:
© 2012 Loren Zemlicka
Grieve not that winter masks the yet quick earth,
Nor still that summer walks the hills no more;
That fickle spring has doffed the plaid she wore
To swathe herself in napkins till rebirth.
These buddings, flowerings, are nothing worth;
This ermine cloud stretched firm across the lakes
Will presently be shattered into flakes;
Then, starveling world, be subject to my mirth.
I know that faithful swift mortality
Subscribes to nothing longer than a day;
All beauty signals imminent decay;
And painted wreckage cumbers land and sea.
I laugh to hear a sniveling wise one say,
“Some winnowed self escapes this reckless way.”
– Walter Clyde Curry, "Grieve Not"
Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
The Badfish Creek in southern Wisconsin was originally named Waucoma by the original Native American inhabitants.
This account of how the Badfish mistakingly got its name comes from the Cooksville Blog:
“The name, “Bad Fish,” appears to have been applied, perhaps mistakenly, in late 1833, when the U.S. government land surveyors were moving through the Wisconsin part of the Michigan Territory from the east and the Rock River to the west past the Yahara (Catfish) River and on further west in Rock County (then part of Brown County), through a “Rolling Prairie,” as their sketch map called it. When the surveyors came upon a large creek in the northwest corner of what is now Rock County, they apparently thought they had reached a part of the Bad Fish River (later the Sugar River) system.
The Bad Fish River was the name of the upper branch of the Sugar River at that time. The land surveyors presumed, mistakenly, that the little creek flowing from that direction was a small tributary of the Bad Fish River. Thus, they named it the Bad Fish Creek.
For whatever reason, the name “Bad Fish Creek” was recorded in the early 1830s survey.”
The Badfish Creek is now a favorite paddling destination in the Madison – Oregon area.
Canon EOS 5D
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
“A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful,
so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity,
is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects.”
– Edna Ferber
Loren Zemlicka Photography 