Category Archives: Uncategorized

Whitefish and Solstice Spuds speak for themselves. In my working career as a Great Lakes scientist I was often in Windsor, Ontario, at the International Joint Commission offices to meet with  our U.S. colleagues from Ann Arbor, Michigan, or to conduct field work on Lake St. Clair.  These junkets often involved  camping out in inexpensiveContinue reading “Not Just Nourishment”

Moving from boats to boundaries and beyond, it’s hard to choose a sequence that seems to flow.  Night Guitar and Another Door Opens, written at different times, both refer to the edges of the underworld but without the drama that might be appropriate to a younger person. I’d like to develop this more pictorially but for nowContinue reading “Transitioning”

Boats have been a near-continuous presence in my life, rowboats, canoes, kayaks, motorboat and sailboats. I enjoy looking at the hulls of boats  when they are out of the water for storage or repair, trying to imagine how they would respond to waves and currents.  Sailboat Seen through Trees On the slope above the landingContinue reading “Boats”

620 Bus to Tsawassen and Night Paving were written a few years ago before we started looking through the Covid-19 lens.  620 Bus … (a ride familiar to me on my day-trips to Vancouover) talks about a landscape in transition from fertile delta farmland to suburban sprawl and the islands of anonymity represented by theContinue reading “Through the Windows of a Vehicle in Motion”

    The drawing above was made in 1980 at the UBC Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver BC. The museum building was designed by noted architect Arthur Ericson. It is a splendid space built around possibly the best collection of West Coast Indigenous art and artifacts. Splendid space notwithstanding, the roof leaks. The paddle depictedContinue reading “Hands (Making)”

  Getting a little bit goofy here with some dog poems.  Many thanks to my daughter, Lyse, who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia whose sharp observations are reflected in the two “chapters” of  My Daughter Sings of Nova Scotia. My Daughter Sings of Nova Scotia 1. Last night’s moon poured silver on the ocean; AtContinue reading “Dogs”

This sketch was made from the roof of our house looking across Saanich Inlet to Mill Bay. From this vantage point, above the level where we spend most of our time, you might feel more an observer than a participant. That was the situation for the first poem, Beautiful Blue, written in the aftermath ofContinue reading “Earth Day”

The above cartoon illustrates “The Official Community Polka”, a throw-away song I wrote some time ago about Official Community Plans.  The planning process is the important business of negotiating a public agreement as to how a municipality will evolve to meet changing needs while protecting its core values. Part of the process in “normal times”Continue reading “Good Times”

    A waning moon with in the clear western skies these last few days put me in mind of the above January 2008 photo I took of the full moon setting over Mill Bay. This is a good time to post some moon poems.  “Full Moon at Sunrise” was inspired by a bitterly coldContinue reading “The Moon Pulls Us All”

Easter Among the Birds In the cool still air that wraps us all in cleanliness the birds call from all around witnessing the rising sun. I mimic their varied voices and with them say “A new day! A new day!” The man we know as “Saviour” said as much before the others shut him down.Continue reading “Easter Sunday”