Glacial memories

Mending Wall
Robert Frost, 1915

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."



..."we have to use a spell to make them balance..." oh, Robert Frost, I hear your voice reciting this poem. My mother had an album of your well worn 'instrument' and I can hear your tone and New England inflection all these many years later.

Glacial information

The gas company workers unearthed this boulder right at the corner by our house. I had to chat with one worker this morning to discuss retting our mailbox. They put it back yesterday afternoon in a spot that makes it easy fodder for our snowplow driver. The digger operator told me he found the pictured boulder with many others, not too far under the road surface when they began digging. This one was the only one he could lift with his machine. The rest of the street has been sandy and easy to dig until they reached the glacial goody-bag at our corner. Another noisy, but sunny and cool day.


I just discovered a local blipper by chance, probably under 12 US miles away in Halifax, MA!

Slightly disappointed in the iPhone 4S, but I'm interested in the camera improvement since I always have it with me and it works well on trips.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs, dead at 56.

For the Record,

This day came in sunny and bright with seasonal temperatures, lovely.