Passing through . . .

In the mailbox this windy Sunday morning . . .

An icon has passed. Gordon Lightfoot died this past Monday, May 1st. He was 85.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on today's date in 1840; while in 1833 Johannes Brahms was born. It's also the 199th anniversary of the premier of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, performed in Vienna.

It's the 211th anniversary of Robert Browning's birth. The poet and playwright was born in 1812 Camberwell, England. His relationship with fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett is one of the most famous in English literature

. . . sound, like life, is defined by the absence of it. It is the pregnant silence between the notes that gives birth to its valence and salience. The notes, like brushstrokes, are plucked off the blank canvas of the future . . . Words in poetry are like notes in a symphony. It’s best not to try to understand them, but, instead, to feel them. No semiotics, just the real thing. Like a mantra that we repeat misplaces its literal meaning. Over time, we inhabit the pure vibration of it. We let go of the you and you and you and you. We turn off the spotlight and bathe in the floodlight, surrendering into something greater than ourselves. – Jeff Krasno

. . .You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train

So, I'd best be on my way in the early morning rain.

. . . For there was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
And many are the dead men too silent - to be real.

. . .someday when your poor heart is on the mend
well, I just might pass this way again.
That's what you get for lovin' me – Gordon Lightfoot