he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend

As some of you may know, all is not well here. I've been reminded to keep in touch; here's tonight's attempt: some photos from recent outings, and a poem that's been on my mind for the last month or so.

This first group is from The House on the Rock, in Spring Green, Wisconsin. 

they looked like former fish, but were just a little sluggish in the cold

The scenery really is breathtaking

Some of the effects are...somewhat overdone...

My interior pictures leave a lot to be desired--there is no sense of scale in that place, and the heat and noise and people...good lord. But this one expresses some of my feelings about it.

I did love the lizard-ish things on the giant planters outside. Would've happily brought one home, were it possible to do so.

Another of the lizards

Late summer and early fall are the best time of year to live along the river. In the morning, on my way to work, it's all I can do to actually go to the office--when the alternative would be to wander along, testing my photographic skills. Or even just looking.

Maybe the best sunlit photo I've ever taken

The texture of the water and the trees on the island

Ideal fall colors

One of the trees in the previous photo

Earlier this week - a barge heading east through the breaking fog

My letters! all dead paper,...mute and white! --
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,...he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand...a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! -- this,...the paper's light...
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this...O Love, thy words have ill availed,
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

[Elizabeth Barrett Browning, XXVII from 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'--in Poems that Make Grown Women Cry, Anthony Holden and Ben Holden, eds. & comp.]