I woke up today and it was 38.2 degrees outside, 58.4 degrees in my house. Time to turn on the heat. Time to get ready for fall. Yesterday my iPhone shuffled me to Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going”. which is the right song for this time of year. It is about as great as a song can be. And Tom Rush’s version, from his legendary album “The Circle Game”, is about a great as a performance can be.
Let’s give thanks for birches!
While we’re at it, let’s also give thanks for poetry:
. . . Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Frost wrote the poem “Birches” just about a century ago. How time flies!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Richard Bowker 