Were You Feeble in the End?

Tags

Death, Forest, Mud, Nature, Photography, Prose

Eyes of opal cream and limbs like a twist of deadwood.

Tears shining like a crow’s back in the midday sun.

I’d like to take up residence in the tracery of an old reptile skin.

Were you feeble in the end? Or did you wear every wince like a fashion?

Night edges in, warm and invasive– a clammy hand about the throat.

Thumping through the dark, there are holes in my punchinello-shoes– and though this path is softened with grass, it is host to many thorns and stones.

(My paternal grandmother died an October ago, and I shot these images shortly after being informed some months later.)

A Brittle Wind…

Tags

Nature, Photography, Poetry, Trees, Woods

Burring through scaly leaves

Along the deer-stamped path

A Brittle Wind begins

As cobalt moonbeams

Paw through knots

Of cowering trees

The wind wends

Through strange limbs

And mutilated hands-

Whimpering

As it fondles the woods

Craggy Fool

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Gloom, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sea, Storm

A hairnet of pink lightning
Flames across glum skies
Shadows saunter, charcoaling
The Sea’s velvet skin

October wind coos
Across ruffled iron peaks
The Brine percolates
Each heaving sigh beckoning

Violently out of place
Craggy Fool remains
Askew at the tide-line
Like a lazy sketch

His bulged back still aches
From last night’s dune-pillowed sleep
Nascent rain oozing
Down the minefield of his face

A lifetime of anomie
Stings in his shoulders
His nails chew through leather palms
His eyes cloud with Storm

He envies the clams
Where dungeons feel like Home
And little mole crabs
Soothed by every ruthless blow

Silent moments
Rarely come
Through the ocean thrum

From cinder plumes
Scavengers plunge
Ranting, brash and loud

Tearing out his thoughts, like guts
Twirling filipendulous

Spotted Only with a Magnifying Glass

Tags

Abstract, Experimental, Nature, Photography, Poetry

She is spotted only
with a magnifying glass,
an animalcule
with limescaled wings
And a dusky face.

Clinging to
a breathing blade
of dancing
chloroplasts,
she sees
the fractals flash
in a fury of green-
the mosaics of her
shieling sea.

The dawn scatters
in a migraine of hues,
the aurific daal’mist
sibilant around this
unseen and muted thing.

Waiting to be flicked
by a snapping finger
of prairie wind,
she watches the world,
as listless as a carcass,
through a cage
of tangled light
and vying stems.

Every Crushing Step

Tags

Black and White, Fall, Floral, Florida, Hope, Introspection, Nature, Photography, Poetry

A humble path,
furry with
emerald moss
and splashed
in blue shadow.

A shiny-backed beetle
suns himself
on a cold
molar-sized stone,
then shuffles off
into a copper sea
of leaves.

So many
roving feet
traverse here.

A horse gallops by
bold and solid
his chestnut sides
heaving.
He is followed
by the stab
of deer hooves
swift in flight.

Now comes
my own restive shoe
hole-pocked
and pebble-filled
to bumble through.

Yet there you grow
tiny purple bloom
as if every crushing step
will always miss you.

Ocean Static Fills My Ears…

Tags

Abstract, Beach, Black and White, Florida, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sea, Water

Sibilant words
Lumber off the sea

Ocean static
Fills my ears

The dunes shrug
Cicadas throbbing

The scent of distant rain
Hanging in a hammock
Of gauzy wind

Fingers probe
Like crab claws
In cold-packed sand

As I listen
To the conversation
Of the waves beyond

“Youth is Happy Because…”

Tags

Black and White, Caterpillar, Florida, Life, Nature, Nature Photography, Photography, Poetry, Quotes, Swamp Moth Caterpillar, Youth

Where raindrop shadows spill

On a bed of rusting leaves-
A Caterpillar sleeps

With lemon dreams

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
– Franz Kafka

Coughing Crickets

Tags

Black and White, Moon, Nature, Night, Noir, Photography, Poem, Prose, Writing

Gasping moonlight signals through a cloudy ocean beard.

Still bodies of flies and dragonflies glint, clinging to the cool, glass skin of dimming florescent lights.

Beneath an orange orb of sodium vapour the glinting lawn looks like a nest of razorblades.

Crickets loom slick and black with the dank breath of December fog nestled on their backs. They sound like coughing hinges, tonight.

Tired Sky of a December Storm

Tags

Birds, Black and White, Florida, Hiking, Mouse, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Storm, Tree

Wrinkle of pink sun
Furrowed in a tired sky-
Spider web shudders

A prickly-pear claw
Pecking at the bone-white path-
A marsh mouse crossing

Tangled branches crack-
Black fury of starlings soar
The December storm

Words Like Coins Jangling in a Jar

Tags

Black and White, Change, Florida, Freedom, Humanity, Melancholy, Orlando, Photography, Poetry, Prison, Rain, Walking

His meaning was

sharp and swallowed,

with words like coins

jangling in a jar.

“I’ve been out for nine days…”