Strolling through a suburban Sunday morning

We took a trip to the shops on a warm Sunday morning.

Rolling down the hill on a hot autumn Sunday morning

There was an 'essential' stop for one fig, and one boysenberry, pastry plus iced coffee (the artist) and spicey chai latte (the writer) at the local French bakery. It really does have a French baker. Fab-ee (in any language).

Le petit-déjeuner

When we reached home (pushing up that slope is harder for an old, overweight quadriplegic man than rolling down) Spike sent me the photo she took of me. For reasons I cannot pin down it brought to mind one of my favourite poems by Marianne Moore.

Here it is.

The Steeple-Jack

Dürer would have seen a reason for living

  in a town like this, with eight stranded whales

to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house

on a fine day, from water etched

  with waves as formal as the scales

on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep

  flying back and forth over the town clock,

or sailing around the lighthouse without moving their wings —

rising steadily with a slight

  quiver of the body — or flock

mewing where

a sea the purple of the peacock's neck is

  paled to greenish azure as Dürer changed

the pine green of the Tyrol to peacock blue and guinea

gray. You can see a twenty-five-

  pound lobster; and fish nets arranged

to dry. The

whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt

  marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the

star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so

much confusion. Disguised by what

  might seem the opposite, the sea-

side flowers and

trees are favored by the fog so that you have

  the tropics first hand: the trumpet-vine,

fox-glove, giant snap-dragon, a salpiglossis that has

spots and stripes; morning-glories, gourds,

  or moon-vines trained on fishing-twine

at the back door;

cat-tails, flags, blueberries and spiderwort,

  striped grass, lichens, sunflowers, asters, daisies —

yellow and crab-claw ragged sailors with green bracts — toad-plant,

petunias, ferns; pink lilies, blue

  ones, tigers; poppies; black sweet-peas.

The climate

is not right for the banyan, frangipani, or

  jack-fruit trees; or for exotic serpent

life. Ring lizard and snake-skin for the foot, if you see fit;

but here they've cats, not cobras, to

  keep down the rats. The diffident

little newt

with white pin-dots on black horizontal spaced-

  out bands lives here; yet there is nothing that

ambition can buy or take away. The college student

named Ambrose sits on the hillside

  with his not-native books and hat

and sees boats

at sea progress white and rigid as if in

  a groove. Liking an elegance of which

the sourch is not bravado, he knows by heart the antique

sugar-bowl shaped summer-house of

  interlacing slats, and the pitch

of the church

spire, not true, from which a man in scarlet lets

  down a rope as a spider spins a thread;

he might be part of a novel, but on the sidewalk a

sign says C. J. Poole, Steeple Jack,

  in black and white; and one in red

and white says

Danger. The church portico has four fluted

  columns, each a single piece of stone, made

modester by white-wash. Theis would be a fit haven for

waifs, children, animals, prisoners,

  and presidents who have repaid

sin-driven

senators by not thinking about them. The

  place has a school-house, a post-office in a

store, fish-houses, hen-houses, a three-masted schooner on

the stocks. The hero, the student,

  the steeple-jack, each in his way,

is at home.

It could not be dangerous to be living

  in a town like this, of simple people,

who have a steeple-jack placing danger signs by the church

while he is gilding the solid-

  pointed star, which on a steeple

stands for hope.

Marianne Moore (Photo by George Platt Lynes, 1935