Todays Pictures

Picture from the garden today

Cows in neighbouring field

 

Demoiselle

 

Tiger Iris

 

Bee on Poppy (see video on post below)

Gladiator Bee

Don't normally post videos but this bee collection pollen on a poppy to the sound of Gladiator is really cool (I think)

June Flowers

Well it is all very green but we can thank the rain for that. The Iris are here and likewise the lilac and all I want is some sunshine to bring everything else on. Here's hoping but the forecast is not very optimistic for the next 2 weeks.

 

Summer Solstice

Spent in the fire
Of preceding night
The longest day is unseen
Washes of cloud hide dawn

And where to now?
With druid robes unsullied
Altar stone bare and cold
Heels walking incomplete arc
The solstice was here
But the sun was not

Slate

Even blackbird

Looks to heavens
In questioning gaze
What has become?
Of bright, bright, days
Plumes of slate
Quarried from sea
Roof this June day
And the closer
To the sun
Wheels the north
The less the heat
Radiates from this pyre
We call summer

Garter Ceremony Windsor (2015)

Pictures from the Garter ceremony at Windsor Castle on Monday from Mike

Cobalt

Grey buildings take light

Transform to honeyed stone
Heat finally comes
Soft waves
Butter on golden toast
Melting under June
A cobalt arc of birdsong
With feathered edges
And men smoke something
On top a railway bridge
A glorious disobedience
Tattoos over unused muscles
Too many swear words,
And far too few clothes
But this is a northern summer

The Bronte's

Where cobblestones met Christ
Tis desolate even now
Twas even drearier then
The Bronte's parsonage
Amongst stone sentinels

Scrolled with fond memorials
Carved upon earth's rocky bones
Thus born of a tiny garden
And written by candlelight
The imaginings of minds
Ennobled by bleakness
Imprisoned in the gloom
Were blooms fated to fade
This flowering of young women
Among rolling fields and heather
Grew metaphors and allegories
To meet in ardour upon pagan crag
Heathered moors and heathen men
For where else might minds go
If not to the stitch, brush or pen
High on the Yorkshire moors
Where the wind holds sway
In Howarth's deep catacombs

 

I visited Howarth in Yorkshire on Thursday where the famous Bronte sisters lived. The setting of the parsonage is very atmospheric. Well worth a visit.

June Sights

Run

What does make the rabbit quail?

But sight of a dogs wagging tail
Yet safe in hedge, thinks he thus
But on t'other side, lurks slinking puss
He is thus found without one friend
When only predator's nature does send
To run to ground, his best defence
Into the burrow where he came whence
In a splash of brown the race is up
But he's too fast to be caught by a pup
A rabbit's life is so full of despair
If only he were as fast as a hare

Explosion

And so sleep on silent witness

For what may arise in the night?
Poke and prod the unaware sleeper
A mole squirming in airy darkness
Expanding covertly; seeking release
Under the white sky of bed linen
And yet sleep on still; dream contented
Stroke its magnificent accumulation
In clockwise, unconscious relief
Till discharge comes into night arms
The explosion of a need over want
And see the fart fade like a ghost

Alien

Unseen in a crowd
It was there
All the time
Codices of defeat
Hiding in the prosaic
I never saw it
But you did
Saw that I was alien
Living a life
That somehow fitted
Everyone else
Better

Oblique

Among the fractures

In search pattern theta
The oblique dance
Stutters and weaves
She hunts like a fire
A yellow conflagration
Within a green maze
And we call her vicious
And she is; magnificently so
But splendour is moot
She wishes only to dance

Savour

But savour not this recovered honour
It is withered in the boastful violence
Pierce me and shall I not also bleed
And so much the easier than thou
And see, he does not just prick me a little
He wounds deep this foolish pride
Dashes to the floor false accusation
That would make of him a eunuch
Unable to indict all beauty by day
Or discharge the unlovely during night

The Rose

A rose no less the sweet, this summer did birth

Now lies less noble; wilting upon the earth
You would think of me injured by this deed
And in blush of crimson my heart does bleed
Who wreaks such war on my revered ground?
Blame lies beyond doubt upon raggedy hound
In the eager hunt his canine nose doth tread
Upon the grass and over fragrant flower bed
But have a care as you ramble without fear
To be more gentle with William Shakespeare

Wager

As we busily unpick strands of time

Into the last gulp of night before day
Remember luck is a poor man's hope
Or else we should hazard summer has come
With all hope of winning the wager
And that which reddens and browns
Under the stellar furnace above
Are not only the apples on the trees

Entwistle Reservoir in rainy June

Entwistle Viaduct

 

Buttercups in field

 

Tree Python

 

The heron sculpture

 

Canadian geese on a stopover

 

Panorama in the rain

Garden May 2015

Cool, green pond plants

 

Robbie thinking of food

 

William Shakespeare makes his entrance

 

Hop climbing around Iris

 

Galleon

Scaffolded and rendered

A grand, colonial design
Matriarch meeting Monroe
The actress is still tall
Svelte and immortal it seems
The reinvented renovation
Perfection in the cosmetic
Both application and design
But comes ever the night
And upon a sea of cotton
She is then lost, becalmed;
A shipwreck; foundering,
Upon the rocks of time
And though we can forgive
An actress her last role
No woman, nor any man
May stay afloat forever
And sheets become shroud
To wrap a plastic life within

Bluebell

I walked over the hill, dale and field

While on the wind church bells pealed
Across ancient wood and shady dell
Through dapplement on nodding bluebell
Orchid of May, vivid scented lightning strike
Queen of the woods is this fluorescent spike
And not for naught do I walk this way
For what compares to an English summer day

Spider

Soft and deadly

To some but not I
Petite tarantula
Undulating quietly
While we sleep
Rising and falling
Like a hairy wave
That greets night
In hirsute whisper

Polar Shrinkage

It falls upon green parchment

Writes in watery scripts
Clear words of change
Water is everywhere
And more is coming
The last rain of dinosaurs
No longer locked to ice
Is now freed by humanity
From frozen bondage
And its fluid antiquity
Leaching from polar prisons
Trickles into the seas
As we also meander to oblivion

Hope

What is expectation?

It is to be given a choice
It is wishing enlightenment
To be whole without conditioning
To live and to love each other
As benign equals
Without reservations
Without condemnation
And no fury, no winds of rage
May still this change
Bigotries rusty chains slip
Clatter to the floor of history
And…
The world may shake a little
But it will still stand
We are only evolving
After all
And once the bound are free
The world will change forever
To the good
And that is the greatest fear
Of those under the yoke of faith

Waiting

And where are they now?

Where do they lurk
Through this inclement May
They rest on growing armies
Brood upon the future
In fading paper houses
Whisper in waxy amphitheatres
Listen to the endless rain
And wait for the sun

May Sights

Tesseract

And the reformation has faded

Glass strikes steel and shatters
A reflection in a starlit mirror
But it is a million years wiser
Evolution served at differing times
The curtain of stars now withdraw
So is revealed the rift in the tesseract
And in this mirror ball of possibility
Temporal dimensions fracture and bloom