NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Carrollton, Kentucky to be precise.

and I see this ditch, and this clay sculpted in an appealing way

and then I come across this

hole. So I get out of the car to take a

closer look, and realize

that beauty can be found in the strangest places.

And isn’t that wonderful.

artsy

architectural photos, when this great big honkin’

duck, shows up

or is it a loon? Anyways, the first thing it does, of course, is high tail it in

the opposite

direction; but damned if that bird didn’t end up

lookin’ artsier than that buildin’ ever could.

NB Flora

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Written in 1917, published posthumously in 1920.

Buy the book for $4000 here:

Poems by Wifred Owen. With an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon.
Owen, Wilfred (1893-1918).

Bookseller: Peter Keisogloff Rare Books, Inc. (Brecksville, OH, U.S.A.)
Bookseller Rating:

…and how they resemble their masters (and vice versa). Well I only wish you could have seen the two of them walking together.

Searched for a good dandelion poem to attend this image. Came up blank. Waited for a while for a muse visitation…No such luck. All I got was ‘fuzzy saffron,  sunshine, square circled faces,writhing and twisting, attention seeking, …peaches, natural beauty…mine, thine, and still spaces’… lame. Still. Hopefully you’ll get something of the same peaceful vibe I got when with it in the wild.

And what is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.
      - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The summer’s flow’r is to the summer sweet,
  Though to itself it only live and die’
    But if that flow’r with base infection meet,
      The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
        For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
          Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
      - William Shakespeare, Sonnet XCIV

To win the secret of a weed’s plain heart.
      - James Russell Lowell, Sonnet XXV

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the headbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O Let them be left, wildness and wet:
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
-  Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, Inversnaid

And another kilometre down the road?

The Golden Lake Bookstore.