DEAR MARCH...

DEAR MARCH by Emily Dickinson

Come in.  How glad I am.  I hoped for you before. Put down your Hat.

You must have walked. How out of Breath you are.

Oh, March, how are you, and the Rest. Did you leave Nature well?

Oh March, come right upstairs with me. I have so much to tell.

I got your letter. And the Birds. The Maples never knew you were coming. I declare, how red their faces  grew.

And all those Hills you left for me to Hue. There was no purple suitable. You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April. Lock the door. I will not be pursued. He stayed away a year to call.

When I am occupied. But trifles look so trivial, as soon as you have come.

That blame is just as dear as Praise. And Praise as mere as Blame.

Photographs 2026

 DEAR MARCH  by Emily E. Dickinson, is in the public domain. 

MERCURIAL...

A house. Forsaken, at the edge of an overgrown path. An ocean at its doorstep. A lost field of dry grass.  A slumbering mercurial night. Wind washed, in the rain. The rain, rain, rain…

 Forest tendrils dripped and dragged forlorn roots. Muddy steps, torn and smothered.  Waiting alone beside an iron gate, exposed.  It swung like a child’s swing, on rusted hinges.

Effortless footfalls from long ago. Perhaps hundreds of 

them. Over those broken stairs that led to even more broken 

doors.  In the rain. That sweet, endless rain. 

                     

Green moss, resembling old man hairpieces, slid down its 

broken shingles. Cracked drainpipes rattled like rocky waterfalls. 

Hawks, enviable raptors of the forest, sat in damp feathers, 

on the roof peaks, calling to each other.  Dawn was about to 

break. Their amber eyes scanning. The hunt was about to begin.

A house, cold now, in the last vestiges of winter, longed for 

warmth. Fields parched and barren stretched beyond its border. 

                             

Muffled rooms, framed by broken glass windows. A great 

silence, except for 

the froth and bubble of wet drapes flapping in their wake. 

A neglected stone fireplace emitted its final embers before ceasing to function.  Someone had been there. Someone, in the murky hours. Someone passing by.

Ashes covered the broken hearth.  The house breathed 

heavily. It remembered. Woken at last by starlight in the old 

fire. It remembered what it was like before winter’s frigid goodbye.

                                    

Someone had lit the fire. Alone in the cold. Then wrapped in the old drapes, had sat before its low flames. Smoke drifted through the vacant rooms.

  

A house, neither grand or new, sat peacefully in the silvery quiet of the morning.  Once, long ago, mortal souls walked and lived in this place. 

Time pondered. In the rain. Waiting for Someone. 

The rain gurgled, then dwindled, drenching the house while it waited. In the rain.

Photographs 2026

RAIN SWEPT...

RAIN in the COUNTRY by Margaret E. Sangster (1828-1912)

The rain fell like a song of hope on fields that had been dying.

It was a mother's loving kiss upon a wistful face.

                                

Tall trees that had been parched and dry 

broke into gentle sighing

And happiness lay like a smile upon the garden place
The house was very snug and sweet; the rain's kind slender fingers

Made magic on the sloping roof and smoothed the streaming pane.

                               

We lighted candles, slim and white, 

and, like a dream that lingers,

                               

They painted paths of drifting light 

against the silver rain.

The house was very sweet and snug.. its shadows caressing.

Yet for a moment we were swept away with sudden aching                              
For folk who do not understand....

that rain may be a blessing, who wander, shelterless, and sad,

                                 

across the rain-swept city.

Photographs 2026 Campbell River, B.C.