The Poetry of Place - 23 September 2014

  I hadn't been to the pond in two weeks and I couldn't miss the official first day of autumn!  The shore line from my favorite vantage point is really beginning to warm up.  The sky was a lovely cerulean blue.  The pond level is continuing to drop since September has been particularly dry.

   I remain fascinated with the water reflections.  Whereas a month or so ago, it was all yellow and green, now it is as if Nature is spilling cans of magenta paint into the water!  It reminded me of the poured paintings of abstract expressionist painter, Helen Frankenthaler.

   When I posted this image on my daily photojournal, someone commented that it was part photo, part painting, and part tapestry.  I can certainly see this image woven as well as painted.

   The effect was mesmerizing...vividly rendered and perfectly still until a wind blew it away.  Nature wiping clean the canvas.  It shimmered back into focus a few minutes later.

   I've always thought that autumn was a wonderful gift.  Just when it seems the world is dying, it flares up with amazing color and texture.  Perhaps it is giving us a final image of bold color to hold in our heart as we approach the monochrome days of winter.

Calendar of the Soul: The Year Participated 
by Rudolf Steiner, translated by Ruth and Hans Pusch

Twenty Fifth Week - (22 - 28 September)

I can belong now to myself
And shining spread my inner light
Into the dark of space and time.

Toward sleep is urging all creation,
But inmost soul must stay awake
And carry wakefully sun's glowing
Into the winter's icy flowing. 

   A participant in the Star Island retreat suggested this book and I will be using the poems in The Poetry of Place project, along with Thoreau's words and my humble attempts at Haiku. Every visit brings new poetic expression and I find myself falling in love with this place.  I do hope I can venture out in canoe in a couple of weeks to dip my hand into these colors!

   I offer this image as a counter point to those above.  It was made on the easterly shore in a cove that was deep in shadow.  The light was very different and the wind here rippled the water.  The warm color in the upper half must have come from a large maple tree to the left.  The whole effect of this was quite stunning and this photograph doesn't begin to translate the silver shimmer, the whispering quiet I experienced there.

   'There are quiet places also in the mind', he said meditatively. 'But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately — to put a stop to the quietness.'
- Aldous Huxley