Swallowing a Cloud

White porcelain cup:
bindweed swallowing a cloud
The eye brims with light

The middle line arrived when I turned back to look more closely at the bindweed and noticed the cloud disappearing "into" the flower. Wednesday's line was joined by two others this morning, two days later. A gift. I don't generally use formal structures or rules in writing poetry; my pieces tend to evolve, creating (summoning) their own shapes. However, the haiku-like form's simplicity seemed to suit the snapshot's capture of an expansive August moment.

This Evening's Enchantment

Magnificent evening walk at the reservation. I wondered if the particular dragonflies I love would be out, and there they were ... magic. It was like an enchantment observing them in all their glittering glory. As before, they invited my camera in, right up close. It was breezy, but they cling like little pennants to the plants. In fact, that's what they are named: Halloween Pennant, Celithemis eponina.

How invisibly
it changes color
in this world,
the flower
of the human heart.

-- Komachi

Solitude

"To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet."

--Charles Caleb Colton

"Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster."

-- Charles Dickens

Yes, just love these words. I'm back.

A Small Serving of Spring Darkness

As an antidote to this brilliant (but cold) spring sunlight, here's a small serving of poetic darkness. The editor of RALPH: The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities asked to reprint "Arms of the Snake," a piece of mine that first appeared in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. This is a poem that arrived unbidden, a duende-fueled surprise, even to me. Read on:

Arms of the Snake

Click on photo to enlarge image.

Skeletal Ice

The Soul should stand in Awe --
-- Emily Dickinson

Delicate claws, skeletons, spiderwebs, daggers and ripples of ice. I suffered a wet sock and shoe getting this picture -- twice -- but it was worth it. This was the most beautiful, intricate ice I have ever seen, a gift formed by the crazy weather at the end of February. Now we are on the cusp of spring; even the last gritty rinds of snow have been washed away by the rain. The world is dripping, thawing. Things are about to happen.

The photo was taken 2/26/11. Click on image to enlarge.

Simian Awe

Nonsense is an assertion of man's spiritual freedom
in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance.
-- Aldous Huxley

Humor is just another defense against the universe.
-- Mel Brooks

I agree. I believe in what I refer to as "the dark and twisted little laugh." It saves me from the shadows every time.

Click on image to enlarge. The photo was taken 2/16/11.

Monkey Love Tulip

Monkey love tulip. Spring. Soon. Really.

The monkey also has a baby. The baby is its own kind of wonderful. (Beware, I'm sure other photos will follow.) The attached antique shop price tag was highly entertaining: "Celluloid monkeys AS IS -- wind up not workin, hole in baby's face." You can't wait to see that baby, now can you?

The photograph was taken this afternoon at my house. Thanks, Cindy S-J for the fabulous birthday monkey and baby. You knew I could no way, no how live without them. Simian bliss.

Simply click on photo to enlarge image.