“Youth is Happy Because…”

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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

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Embracing the Squirrely Kitten Within

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Beauty, Exuberance, Healing, Hope, Inspiration, Introspection, Kitten, Life, Pets, Photography, Quotes, Reflection, Thoughts, Youth

“Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”
-Victor Hugo

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

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

“What happens when people open their hearts?”…
“They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

(Saga captured whilst out kitten-walking amongst a sea of squirrels)

P.S. More of the model, Fyodor Kitten, in Sir’s lovely and charming blog post here:  The Kitten That Rescued Himself)

Many jubilant cheers,

-Smiling Toad

Looms like a Bruise

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Bird, Black and White, Death, Dragonfly, Existence, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Youth

Seconds throbbing through paper skin,

Water-colour eyes drunk with anguish,

These naked moments undulating, still.

Askew and awkward, in this festered stance,

Stirs the fetid earth where lies a crippled bird,

Leaking into the rich soil, bleak consciousness.

Finite, the failing senses of flailing desperation-

The hum of rotors, the smell of dandelion milk;

Rusty metal groans as wind slings the old swings,

Air of evening dew and smashed mushroom.

Last yellow warbler trills, wickedly unheard.

Reticence swallows the rebellion of life.

The silhouettes of leaves are stained in shame,

As Death looms like a bruise in the gaze of Youth.

Pools of Melancholy

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Age, Black and White, Cocoa Village, Discovery, Florida, Gutter, Introspection, Melancholy, Ocean, Photography, Rain, Sea, Street, Youth

I was born a crabby, old man, the biting brush of early autumn a perfect match for this newborn and decrepit soul. Memories of moldered monochrome, thoughts as rugged and harsh as the fissured bark of the ancient oak trees, and a flare for donning the old checkered highland’s cap and an un-fused pipe redolent of walnut tobacco; such was I since the day I first cast these miry eyes unto the unwary world. I found beauty in the withered, poetry in the dead, and my soul in the smooth ripples slipping across those Sepia Pools of Melancholy.

I was born a cantankerous old man, limping along, nefarious, sometimes with a varnished cane, sometimes alone, snarling with a whirling eye of billiard white at any passerby that might happen near. I had crooked teeth to accent trench coats and London Town hats still redolent of acrid cigars. When I flashed those serrated masticators with all my fury, even the bravest squirrels darted for safer ground. What passion I had for instilling terror in my gnarly ways, askew, stomping along those vacant, black and white streets veined with sniveling cracks.

But somewhere along this old man’s crawl through this spare score and some years, I found my way to the ocean, and there, upon that strumming shore, I discovered acoustic melody, and new forms of poetry, and along the swash zone of shattered scallop shells glinting pink and lavender, the waves encasing this craggy visage with the sweet kiss of brine, I became young for the first time.