It is a Sunday morning.  A glorious day, sunlight, all vegetation shimmers after the inch or so of rain that fell yesterday.  A squirrel aspires to “carve” a habitation from an old log in the middle of our woodpile, — to give birth to it’s babies.  Yesterday the squirrel peered at me from the depths of the dark hole.  We  leave cob-corn nearby, easy nourishment for this animal and others too.

This is a segment from Leaves Of Grass, the great work by Walt Whitman.  The photographs were taken yesterday in the backyard.

Whatever would put God in a poem or system of philosophy
as contending against some being or influence
is also of no account…

The great master has nothing to do with miracles.
He sees health for himself as being one of the mass…

To the perfect shape comes common ground.
To be under the general law is great
     for that is to correspond with it.
The master knows that he is unspeakably great
     and that all are unspeakably great…
That nothing for instance is greater than to conceive children
     and to bring them up well…
That to be
is just as great
as to perceive or tell.

-excerpt Leaves of Grass, Introduction, by Walt Whitman, published 1855