SMOKY SUN SMOKY MOON

"Tell me the story about how the Sun loved the Moon so much he died every night to let her breathe..." -Hanoko Ishii

Smoke filled clouds

Covering the sun.

Covering the moon.

"They will continue this chase, until the Sun shatters, engulfing the moon and everything in a burst of light..." -Kelseyleigh Reber

Orange pink clouds from the fires south

The moon hidden with orangeade smoke by night.

Pink cotton candy clouds 

Billow and wallow.

"Life. This morning the sun made me adore it. It had, behind the dripping pine trees, the oriental brightness, orange and crimson, of a living being, a rose and an apple....a daily paradise..." 

                                         -Juan Ramon Jimenez

And the moon burnt orange  like a bloody eyeball.

And the smell of fire smoke.

Everywhere............

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls..." - George Carlin

Photographs 2020

 

SQUIDGY GOLD BOOTS

"Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons..." -Jim Bishop

It's here. FALL. On Sept 22. At last. Finally. Time to watch  the leaves change, and the wind howl. Stomp in rain puddles.

In the morning the mists  hug the forest.

The Stellar Jays hug the trees. Waiting. For peanuts. They shriek in delight when I toss them into the seed pan.

 Patience

"Autumn had arrived. The last blossom whispered.....let me stay awhile...." -Meeta Ahluwalia

Years ago, in the fall, I remember walking to school in cloth sneakers. My mother decided I could have a pair of rubber boots. 

Not the fun gold ones I saw.  Gold with speckles. Oh no. the ugly ones sitting  beside them on the store shelf.

Black  with red rims. Gum boots .They were a little large. But they would splosh through the rain just as well. So I was told. My mother bought those ones. 

Splash. Splash. Sploosh. They kept my feet dry.  Splish . Squidgy squidgy  in the mud. They worked. They were boring.

Then I came up with a fantastic idea to make them more interesting. I cut off the rims and gouged pieces out of the tops. To make flippy pieces like feathers. Flop flop flop went the tops of the ugly gum boots.

My mother had a gold ink pen that she used for Christmas cards. She kept it on her dresser.  I used that to paint gold on the flippy ends. So now when they flopped around there was a splash of gold.

I would hide the re created boots in my back pack, and wear them at school only. Then switch to sneakers for coming home.

One day  I forgot to change.  The puddles and the leaves were too tempting. Splish. Sploosh. Squidgy Squidgy.  I arrived home soaking wet, boots a-flapping. And my mother was home early. Earlyyyyyy.

She didn't say much. I told her they were great for squooshing in the wet mud. She kept looking at me. I think she was trying not to laugh. She took them from me. 

That weekend she took me back to the store. I came home with those gold speckled  boots. I wore them around the house. I wore them outside.  The gold boots were great. But they didn't quite have the same satisfying flap of the other ones. I never saw them again.

Till the day I closed up the house, after my mother  was gone, so many years later. It was a late winter's day, spring just around the corner.

I found those cracked, cut up squidgy boots, flippers flopping, at the back of her bedroom  closet. She had kept them, wrapped in white tissue paper. All that time. Waiting for me to find them again.......

"There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves..." -Joe L. Wheeler

 Photographs 2020

ON THE COAST

THE HURRICANE   written in 1854 (excerpts)

                      by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) Born in a log cabin in Massachusetts, his father was a lawyer and his mother could trace her ancestry back to the Mayflower. William became a lawyer, and a poet, preferring the latter.By 1825 he became editor of the New York review, published many collections, and even promoted Lincoln to the nomination and the presidency. William Bryant died after a fall in Central Part in New York.

Lord of the winds, I  know thy breath in the burning sky!

And I wait for the coming hurricane.

Silent and slow, and terribly strong, the mighty shadow is borne along.Like the dark eternity to come.

Though the calm of the thick hot atmosphere looks up at its gloomy folds with fear.

They darken fast, and the golden haze of the sun is quenched in the lurid haze. A glare that is neither night nor day.

The cloud above and the earth beneath, to its covert glides the silent  bird. Uplifted among the mountains round, and the forests hear and answer the sound.

His ample robes on the wind unrolled. Giant of air! We bid thee hail!

How his huge and writing arms are bent to clasp the zone of the firmament,

And fold at length,in their dark embrace, from mountain to mountain.....

Darker.still darker...........

The whirlwinds bear the dust of the plains to the air..........

And hark to the crashing, of the chariot of God in the thunder cloud!

You may trace its path by the flashes

From the rapid wheels where ever they dart

As the fire bolts leap to the world below and flood the skies with a lurid glow.

A whirling ocean that fills the wall of the crystal heaven, and buries all. And I cut off from the world, remain alone .......

                                 with the terrible hurricane.

 Photographs 2020