The Hand of Man

Timeless ancient giants given form 50 million years ago
Cetaceans are the gentle voyagers of the deep blue oceans
Sleek and streamlined pedigree; the greyhounds of the sea
A giant Fin baleen whale surfaces from this veiled deep
Into a blood-spattered abattoir of human ,hateful greed
70 tons of sentient grace destroyed by monsters from land
I have not powerful words, nor influential outrage to bring
For wrongly I imprint my human empathies upon whales
But in truth why would they wish anything from humanity
Better they look to the stars for aid; little will come from Earth

Iceland has resumed its commercial hunting of fin whales after a two-year suspension by landing the first of an expected 180 whales in Hvalfjördur. The first kill prompted protests from environment and animal welfare groups that the hunt is "cruel and unnecessary". Undercover pictures taken aboard the Hvalur 8 by Greenpeace show the harpooned whale being cut up for meat that is likely to be exported to Japan. Fin whales are the second largest animal on earth after the blue whale and are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species.

 

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) condemned the Icelandic whaler Kristján Loftsson who has resumed fin whaling after a two year break. "It is a very sad day seeing these images and knowing that this endangered animal has suffered a cruel death, only to be cut up for meat that nobody needs," said Robbie Marsland, UK director of IFAW. "It is time that this dying industry was ended.” Some of the meat has ended up in dog food products in Japan. “We urge the Icelandic government to listen to its whale watching and tourism operators and many members of the public both within and outside Iceland and recognise that slaughtering whales is uneconomic as well as inhumane. Whale watching brings greater benefit to coastal communities."
 

Iceland cancelled fin whale hunts in 2011 and 2012 partly because Japan, the largest market, was suffering an economic downturn after of the devastating tsunami in March 2011. Seven fin whales were killed in Iceland's waters in 2006, 125 in 2009 and 148 in 2010. Loftsson's company Hvalur plans to hunt up to 180 fin whales in the 2013 season.
 

"Whaling is brutal and belongs to a bygone era not the 21st century," said John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK. "It is deeply regrettable that a single Icelandic whaler backed by the government is undermining the global ban on commercial whaling which is there to secure the future of the world's whales."

Fin-whale-being-landed-at-Hvalfjordur-whaling-station-c-EIA
 

 

I took this photo of a frog in the garden but it blurred because the frog moved and the camera couldn't focus fast enough. I noticed the strange markings on its back and blew them up and added some colouring – spooky or what?

It’s like the film ‘The Fly’ only with a Frog

Below is the adjusted picture and the original

7900 odd Miles

Unless you move the moon closer to Mars

You cannot ever hold back all the waves
Cannot separate all the shells on the shore
Cannot stop 7900 miles of spherical balance
So hear the sound of the ocean and remember
The seven veils of sunlight* will not falter yet
Another billion years of summer wonders await
So we still cross over the long arid miles to sea
For revelation never came sweeter; as beside water

Heron in flight

Chenille Wings

I thought of you as I lay there still and alone and you came

You enclosed me in the night like a coverlet of butterflies
My honeyed trail of tears soothed by soft, velvet kisses
From delicate chenille wings beating in time to my heart

Anaglyph

Perhaps life itself is seen in stereo as an anaglyph*

The 3D world is here and we sit betwixt colours
A different eye view for the soul and for the heart

Green for the soul that welcomes such contentment

Soothed by each new day in a safe place to exist
Or...
Red for the heart that aches in commensurate sorrow
At each new piece of ill news that threatens peace

We here get to choose which lens we should like to use
In this secure state so we would wish the same for you
Even if we know that life for some is truly unbearable
 

Today I will gaze from red in the hope you see green

Just for a day tumble into my world and live in peace
Even if the rose tint of reality returns again to haunt

*A three-dimensional visual effect created by dyeing each of two images a different colour, usually red and green, and then viewing them through complementary-coloured filters, one over each eye

A new study out show we can do everything better up north - even dying. It's a bit worrying

Sweet Water

One-sided heretic of gentle misfortune perhaps

But never as contented as when the rain falls fast
On a blessed morning imagining nonchalant cares
Angels may one day come to take me away to bliss
But while the sun shines and such sweet water falls
I could not imagine a more wondrous place to exist

Collective Embrace

One crescent moon; nascent and vital.

Filtering down through the summer dawn
Tracing grey down to earth as moonlight
Silver in blue on new rising yellow shards
Onto the honeybee sheltering on a green leaf

Far from the collective embrace of her sisters

She sees the sun and the hive mind calls to her
‘Be at peace little sister and come home to us’
As the moon sets in the west over the new sky
So she rises to the air and heads to her family

Melding

The longer days melding vernal to summer run swiftly into the solstice

May flowers finally come of age late; hanging high within hedgerows
Pink-white lace laid on green gowns gives a rustic farewell to Spring
Drowns us in excess joy as seasons finally converge; erupting growth
In a helix from a drifting volcano sending plumes of green heavenward

The Breach

Deliberate not cost; but deem it worthy

Am I not without shame to desire you?
Like a new emergent locust into fertile rain
I will envelop you; overwhelm your heart
Savour each morsel of its feigned essence
Quench only the burning in my wings
That would take me unto the moon
Ere the wind blew in a right direction
Falter then in protestations of disdain
But remove prescience from wisdom not
For we need but open the door only a crack
And all the ghosts past rush into the breach

Through the Looking Glass

Shepherded to this place 

Empowered, de-evolving
Too soon to walk safely
Yet we continue to run
Into all the new days;
And unknown scenarios
Like warm ragged winds
Through unfamiliar country
We swirl around stunned
In all the empty promises
For we see how sweet
Life could be
Through the looking glass
If we lived on your side of it

The Smear

Released to this fast falling dusk of sighs

Into new night runs the smear of the day
For the soul of day must always meet night
Only then is the inspiration of man released
Into a full assault on the domain of reason
No less blacker than the yellowing dawn

Two of the new spring arrivals

A Star

To fall as a star

Shooting into night
On a curvature of pleasure
An erupting flower
That sheds it pollen
On a damp, moaning sky

Equality

Hope now sees the desert flowers opening in the rain

To end time spent under a hostile sun and finally evolve
And soon the sweetest kiss of the honeyed bee is laid
Onto the brightest and most vibrant blooms of humanity
For now any two sentient hearts aged of consent may join
And in that new gender blind love; open a gentler door
Out of the desert and into the cool, green fields of equality

Mathematical Enquiry

Seven times seven plus three

Probably a mathematical enquiry
More likely an unravelling sum
Of complex flux settling to dust

The Temperate Zone

In the earth’s northern bands now comes summer

Faltering steps of gentle warming are now waxing
Slow and deliberate it has taken on the old world
Shaped it anew in broad strokes of deepening green
It comes neither fast enough, nor warm enough; for me
The close high summer days still seem so far away yet
Even as the zenith of radiance nears its full breadth
So runs out the world within the temperate zone
Hope each year dashed by geographical location
For this is no Spain; no Provence and no Tuscany
Just a damp quarter of England called Lancashire
Yet it is green and whole; even if it lowers the soul
And what the sun omits we supply with imagination

We grow yet never evolve

Two to three weeks late this year
Finally watch a spring evening unfold
Pigeons vie for the best spots in trees
Against a backdrop of creaking branches
Leaf bud coverings finally burst
Fall through dappled sunlight
A rain of green-brown confetti
Strewing on the ground
A deer flicks through the garden
Away by the time the dog has a scent
Snuffling grass like a truffle hound.
Overhead a heron's broad wingspan
Looking for a way into the ponds.
Circles and glides across a blue sky
A cold wind blows from the north
Slicing through the hot sunshine
Biting midges take to the evening air
In a formation of insect Spitfires
Mercifully to be blown way off course
Return home; see the unfolding news
Horror spills out in high definition
I want to return to my shaded arbour
And never leave its grace for...
We may develop; yet we never evolve

The Sword of Truth

So when they come to write my hagiography;*

What will they say?
That I was not a saint or leader of a great house
They will say
Here is the story of an unremarked man
And see the briefness of its pages
But you my love will know
The true spirit of the man
Cannot be writ from a strangers memories
And the sword of truth sheathed and unused
Is all the blunter for cutting out falsehood

*Hagiography (pron: hageeography) (from the Greek (h)ağios “holy” or “saint”) and graphēin (“to write”), refers to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, although less common.

Clowns cry out Angerously

 
Nonsense doth decry all that is the essence of benevolence?
When snakeish and egotistical buffoons cry out angerously
If a just and societal sharing perforce takes away a tithe of
Excess gained through the exploitation of the fellow man
Surely makes them rage like a beast against darkening clouds
They deserve it more; no matter the gloomy cost to common good
So they shall have it now, but not long; for this bitter dance of tears
Enters its final movement and when the motion stops, so it rains
The world cleans away long ages of fault; renews to better design
Scents the globe in a precious arousal of the senses called compassion

When food alone will just not do

Of a cook that beats and whisks
Within the dark like an alchemist
No bullion made save golden pastries
That ease the waking heart to glee
So then also does enigmatic night
Sing operatic arias to the soul
To calm to dawn a fluttering heart
When food alone will just not do

The Actor

The actor is finally revealed

Unmasked in the final act
As a jester of some magnitude
It matters not now left or right
For his exit is verily assured

Prehensile

The snake weaves across a mosaic floor
Soft and gentle; as a zephyr across dunes
Its prehensile length smears the tiles
Warning symbols etched in diamonds
Coiling around objects it enters the garden
Slithering from day into the jewel of night

Reasoned Peace

Rain droplets fall onto boots that walked out into a cooler morning

Among fading daffodils and first mown grass it falls in soft globules
Scents the morning world around me in a solidifying arousal of senses
From a deep reverie recall compassion into the light of reasoned peace
Take the morning and its meaning and let the rain wash away fault

Solace of Embers

The outlook lifts amid summer’s clime like a tender breath

Vellum wrapped thoughts can be shared on starry evenings
Beliefs as gentle as the brush of downy wing on heavy brow
Are disseminated like the solace of embers in a winter refuge

Minimalist to complex

 

Summer arrives so fast

Days wake and slumber
To complex feathered song
And if days can expand
Washed in warming light
Take root and grow swift
Minimalist to complex
Then I think so must I

When I run up the hill

Tobacco free now for 6 months

Saving fifteen hundred pounds
But I miss it so; even still
It will probably never leave me
This feeling of loss
But I tell myself it is worth it
When I look at the savings
When I run up the hill
Chasing a swift running dog
For many years longer to come

A state of grace can claim the soul

Paths are laid out before me like intersecting unions of precision and purpose

They sit below the evaporating dawn mist; but above the fog of endless labour
Choose a way now you are enlightened by the years gained; and travel its length
Before a state of grace can claim the soul to make easy decisions for a lonely heart
It can never be a choice for the craven requiring a leap of faith into the unknown
No outcome foretold; it is a gamble on goodness, built within the world of the meek
Though unsure I shall set my foot on this conduit and walk in the quiet ease of truth

I forgive you

 

I choose to split bread with ghosts

That rise and wander in the night
You cannot gain say me?
No more than you can tell me
What to do at this time
Perhaps it is inevitable;
Now that I finally...
See through your ailing disguise
But the more I become my father,
The more I am able to forgive you