Early Morning Snow - after rainy night

Charcoal JOE - by Walter Mosley

 

Back in October - the 31st - I did a post on the book 'The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey' and I commented on it being 'the most meaningful novel that I have read in quite a while' - which was for me a really subdued statement.

and I will give the same brief rundown on the author as before:

Walter Mosley

Born

in Los Angeles, California, The United States

January 12, 1952

Walter Mosley (b. 1952) is the author of the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins, as well as numerous other works, from literary fiction and science fiction to a young adult novel and political monographs. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other publications. Mosley is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City

Neither to give the content of Charcoal JOE away or to be any kind of spoiler (I am only 35 pages in) for this 'mystery series' - but I do want to quote a paragraph out of context that proves to me once again that one can only find Truth in works of fiction - to wit:

That lesson was deeper than the explanation of metaphor.  Bonnie taught me something about humanity right then.  Here I'd been living movie plots and novel scenarios while there were men and women like Jogue and Bonnie in the world, digging their hands into the mud and making life: everyday pedestrian Christs -- both frail and omnipotent.

by itself this is might not seem a command performance but as part of the background of this novel this is the kind of writing that wins Mosley awards and is the kind of writing that I can only aspire to - and by the way if you were wondering I think the book so far is great.

Grendel at the Marsh

Wild Geese - by Mary Oliver

these particular geese are heading for their evening resting place on a small creek off the river - swimming not flying but the feeling is the same

Wild Geese - by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Maxine Kumin describes Mary Oliver in the Women's Review of Books as an "indefatigable guide to the natural world, particularly to its lesser-known aspects."^[9] Reviewing Dream Work for The Nation, critic Alicia Ostriker numbered Oliver among America's finest poets: "visionary as Emerson [... she is] among the few American poets who can describe and transmit ecstasy, while retaining a practical awareness of the world as one of predators and prey."^[2] New York Times reviewer Bruce Bennet stated that the Pulitzer Prize–winning collection American Primitive, "insists on the primacy of the physical"^[2] while Holly Prado of Los Angeles Times Book Review noted that it "touches a vitality in the familiar that invests it with a fresh intensity."

Dark Brown Is The River - Golden Is The Haze