023. Here be dragons

I was inspired today (again) by Catherine Singer's Icelandic pictures (I have to ration myself or half of my posts would be on Iceland too); and also Barbara Laucius's beach pictures, of broken down driftwood, entitled Beach Worn. Taking Staffa (day 21) into the mix also, along with the eye-shaped curves in Carianne Garside's days 20-22, and admiring the word "basalt", the heaviness and solidity of it, the shiny wet blackness...

  

      Breaking the surface, basalt scales
            drip, dully sheened; sun warming
                  anthracite back. Flex wing muscles,
                        expecting a geological grinding, but
                              silent. Earthbound in the step-off
                                    point between sea and layered airs,
                                          leap to regain fluidity. Somersaults
                                                of pewter, tumbling your buildings.

007. trees

Barbara Laucius is celebrating natural beauty in her 100 days project bearbonesart.blogspot.com/ which brought me to contemplate her picture of birches in an Alaskan spring-not-yet-summer. My mind making connections to the blog carnival >language>place (which I will host around 4 weeks from today) from the first carnival I heard of, a tree carnival. Making connections through the carnival and also through this project. Also in my head the following refrain from a Nirvana song. And the poem I wrote for the lightning struck tree I pass on my way to work.

     My girl, my girl, don't lie to me
     Tell me where did you sleep last night

     In the pines, in the pines
     Where the sun don't ever shine
     I would shiver the whole night through 

                                                                                                                                     blasted

                                                                                                                                     blasted but beautiful still

                                                                                                                                     in its way, most days

                                                                                                                                     I drive right by

                                                                                                                                     but I stopped this morning,

                                                                                                                                     I wanted to see

                                                                                                                                     if it still lived

                                                                                                                                     with its heart splintered so