The Red Barn Remembers
Fujifilm x100
The old red barn. kells, county Kilkenny
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
The Red Barn Remembers
The red barn stands, silhouetted against the sky.
A tree wraps its young limbs about her
as if to protect her from time and age.
Her roof is sagging, color faded ,
An errant plume of red along her frame.
.
Yet, proudly she stands, remembrance of a happy time.
Shelter from the rain, children
Playing in her hair, lovers hiding in her shadows.
Beauty I see now, not bright, not boastful.
With dignity and respect she bows to age.
October In The Mountains
Slievenamon, a mountain in october
irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
October In The Mountains
by : Aletha Rappaport
The North Wind does blow,
His chilly fingers on my face
Tell me it is time to go –
To leave our mountain home
And seek a warmer clime
Before ice forms on the lake.
How can winter be so close?
The woods are alive with color –
.
Yellow, yellow and more yellows
Of every shade and hue –
Reds and orange, browns and russet too.
Autumn having her last fling
Before submitting to Winter’s icy sting.
The Waterwheel, by Jalaluddin Rumi
Nikon D300
The Waterwheel at kells, County Kilkenny
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
The Waterwheel
Stay together, friends.
Don’t scatter and sleep.
Our friendship is made
of being awake.
The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.
That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.
Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.
Sunday evening Poem
Fuji film x100
Kilkenny landscape view
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
Today is the tomorrow
By Neol Cronin
Always on the horizon but never here,
Travelling towards, but never near,
Never sure of what’s in store
No matter what, we will always want more.
Tomorrow’s a day, full of great hope,
Because maybe today, we just cannot cope.
Tomorrow is the day, to us no-one can give.
Tomorrow is the day, we will never live.
.
Our being is the present, the here and now.
Our hope – is tomorrow, somewhere, somehow
Tomorrow’s the pipedream, we have today
Today is the tomorrow, we sought yesterday.
Now that Autumn has begun (Two Autumn Poems)
Autumn colours in the Landscape
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Autumn
By : Dorian Petersen Potter
Autumn comes singing in
Displaying her treasures’ galore.
So prettily dressed she grins
Spreading more beauty than before
She transforms the trees one by one,
She paints their leaves with new hues.
There’s a different kind of fun,
Now that Autumn has begun
.
There’s a magic in the air,
In the smells and all the colors.
Cool breeze plays with my hair,
While her beauty I just stare!
Autumn has come back at my door,
What a sight! It’s the season I adore
.
Amber Glow
By : Wesley Mincin
Red and yellow painted leaves
hang idly within the trees
They break and sail along the breeze
As fires of Autumn’s time
They dance and surf upon the ground
Overlap each other with ruffling sound
A setting I am glad I found
As fires of Autumn’s time
Like fires of the Autumn season
they leap and dance without a reason
A factor of Autumns many seasons
As fires of Autumn’s time’
The grey clouds break, the sun appears
The dancing leaves appear to sere
These flames its kept for many years
As fires of Autumn’s time
My Land
Fujifilm X100
The Landscape of county Kilkenny, Ireland
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
My Land
By Thomas Davis
She is a rich and rare land;
Oh! she’s a fresh and fair land;
She is a dear and rare land–
This native land of mine.
No men than her’s are braver–
Her women’s hearts ne’er waver;
I’d freely die to save her,
And think my lot divine.
She’s not a dull or cold land;
No! she’s a warm and bold land;
Oh! she’s a true and old land–
This native land of mine.
Could beauty ever guard her,
And virtue still reward her,
No foe would cross her border–
No friend within it pine!
Oh! she’s a fresh and fair land;
Oh! she’s a true and rare land;
Yes! she’s a rare and fair land–
This native land of mine.
Who Has Seen the Wind ?
Who Has Seen the Wind
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
Who Has Seen the Wind?
By Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Source: The Golden Book of Poetry (1947)
Going up to the Comeragh mountains, a poem by Li Po
Knocknaree, Comeragh mountains, county Waterford
irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Going up to the Comeragh mountains
Alone Looking At The Mountain
By Li Po
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other –
Only the mountain and I.
—————————————-
The Comeragh mountains are located in the north west of county Waterford, Ireland, resting above the river Suir as it flows through county Tipperary.
I visit these mountain many times during the year and no day is ever the same, this place can be wonderful in the Summer and wild and unfriendly in the winter months. Ireland is not know for much snow fall, yet at least once a year these mountains will be covered in fresh snow.
This is a very special place, one I love to visit.
These Images are taken during the summer months on a walk upto Knocknaree ridge, which offers some stunning views of county Waterford and on a good day it’s coast line.
Knocknaree, Comeragh mountains, Gallery
The crows will only grow louder, poem: Laura Breidenthal
A crow flying in-front of Slievenamon, County Tipperary
Landscape and nature photography : Nigel Borrington
The crows will only grow louder
By : Laura Breidenthal
There is no celestial place for you to guide my thoughts
Can you not see that I am free from you?
I am a crow perched high in the treetops
You will hear my crowing and you may hate it
But, you cannot take away my voice!
Yet still, as fire oppresses forests of life,
You can abuse my freedom to find your glory
You may discard these words for your love of gods,
And in so doing you may simply ignore
All the cries that I so passionately utter
But my infectious species will guide your mind straight back
To that once so lonely treetop where you merely glanced
And there will be multitudinous, oppressing thoughts
That shall enslave you and bind you unwillingly
The crows will only grow louder when you turn away—
When you pretend to ignore with your remaining, strangling pride
For my voice is a production sent from above
Dispatched to judge you pitilessly for your swelling lies!
And the choirs of ferocious beaks shall open forever
Harmony and dissonance as one
Strolling down memory lane, a poem by : Taran Burke
Canon G1x
Newtown lane, County Kilkenny
Kilkenny landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
Strolling down memory lane
By : taran burke
Strolling down memory lane
Where the colors begin to fade.
Strolling down memory lane
Is where I want you to come along.
Strolling down memory lane
is a test of time and mind.
Strolling down memory lane
I won’t be afraid.
Strolling down memory lane
Is lacking in color.
Strolling down memory lane
Is travelling in time.
Strolling down memory lane
Not a storm in sight
Strolling down memory lane
is joy without fright.
A memory that I have created in my mind,
Stands the test of time.
Where the Rivers Flow
Sigma SD15, 15-30mm lens, ISO 50
River Barrow, County Kilkenny
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
Where the Rivers Flow
By : Monique Sapla
Have you ever wondered,
Where do the rivers flow
Do they flow forever,
Where does the water go.
Do rivers somewhere finish,
Where does a river start
Do all lead to the ocean,
Or do they break apart.
Someday I’d like to follow,
A river to its end
I’d run to the horizon,
Through fields and around bends.
Have you ever wondered,
Where do the rivers flow
Do they go on forever
Someday I’d like to know
Monday mornings, mist in the woods
Monday morning mist in the woods
Kilkenny landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
Monday Mornings
Finally breaks the morning light,
ending a long, restful night.
From this place, the sun through the trees,
appears to reveal some misty scene.
Colorless branches contorting the rays of the sun,
light breaking through trees from some place of desolation.
Slowly to the world vision returns,
it becomes apparent that nothing has changed.
So an excuse not to begin the week,
fades into the glimmer of the soft sun rays.
Our tired bodies, hardly able to stir,
begin our long journey to the weeks return.
Going down to Littleton bog, County Tipperary
All images using a Canon G1x and a Fujifilm x100
Images of Littleton peat bog, County Tipperary
Irish landscape photography by : Nigel Borrington
Going down to Littleton Bog.
To myself I feel that very little depicts the landscape of Ireland as much as it’s peat bog areas, peat has been cut from this landscape for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Littleton Bog is about 30km from my home and I visit this area many times during the year, too both walk our dog Molly and take sometime too take images and just be out in what can be a very wild place in the winter months along with a wonderful place in the summer.
The mass production of peat from the Littleton area has left this landscape deeply affected as you can see from this photo and the photographs below. However I have also tried by best to show how the area around the bog can be reclaimed for both nature and wildlife.
Many Animals and Birds make the reclaimed lakes here their home during both the winter and summer months. Littleton bog is also home to many rare plants and insects with multiple entries in the Irish national biodiversity database.
Seamus Heaney
Last week the Irish Poet Seamus Heaney died and he wrote this Poem about the Irish bog lands.
Bogland
By Seamus Heaney
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening–
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.
They’ve taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They’ll never dig coal here,
Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.
Images of the Bog – Gallery
On An Apple-Ripe September Morning
An Apple-ripe September morning.
Irish Landscape Photography,
Kilkenny based photographer : Nigel Borrington
On An Apple-Ripe September Morning
Patrick Kavanagh
On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.
The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy’s haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight
To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.
As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.
And I thought of the wasps’ nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.
The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.
I’ll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.
Maybe Mary might call round…
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.
Boann, goddess of the River Boyne. A Gallery and Poem.
A Story told by: Deanne Quarrie
Boann, Deanne Quarrie
Boann is the Irish goddess of the river Boyne. Her name means “She of the white cattle.” She was the wife of Nechtain and the beloved of the Dagda, the Good God. It is possible she could be a later naming of Danu Herself. Aenghus mac Og, her son, was the product of the affair between Boann and Dagda. In order to keep the pregnancy secret, the Dagda halted the sun for the term of the goddess’s pregnancy, and so Aenghus was born out of time.
Boann is a Goddess of fertility and the stars. She connects the Way of the White Cow to the White Mound of the Boyne. She gives her name to the preeminent brugh in all of Ireland, Brugh na Boinne. She is honored mid-winter at Imbolc.
Many ancient peoples had stories of floods in which water was both honored as a life bringer and as a destroyer. Water was seen as something that “escaped” from the realms of the gods.
In many of the stories it seemed to be a female who was involved when water, would through some disaster, come to the land, bringing growth and abundance though turbulence.
Probably the most famous version of this myth in Celtic tradition is the Irish story of the Well of Segais.
Growing around this well were nine hazel trees of wisdom, whose nuts fell into the water and gave it the quality of divine illumination, much sought-after by those seeking this wisdom.
Boann was the wife of Nechtan, keeper of the sacred Well of Segais, which was a source of knowledge. Only Nechtan and his cupbearers were permitted to approach the well. The goddess Boann desired to drink from the well herself, to increase her power.
She attempted to challenge the Well of Segais, by going around the well chanting, circling widdershins (counterclockwise, or against the sun direction) . She circled the well three times, as she chanted “amrun.” The well rose against her incantations. Three waves rose up from the well which then flowed forth in five streams and drowned her. Because she was of the Sidhe, she did not die. She lost an arm, a leg and an eye in her battle with the well.
The five streams of wisdom that flowed from this well represent our five senses: taste, smell, feeling, sight and hearing. In her contest with the Well of Segais, Boann experienced “shamanic death” of drowning. In so doing, she gained the Wisdom of Segais as it swept her away.
Manannan said of this….
“I am Manannan, son of Ler, king of the Land of Promise; and to see the Land of Promise was the reason I brought [thee] hither. . . . The fountain which thou sawest, with the five streams out of it, is the Fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which knowledge is obtained. And no one will have knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and out of the streams.”
From this, we learn that we must experience through all of who we are, through all of the five senses which must be open. This is our gift from Boann.
Boann can be a great ally for poetic composition and many other forms of artistic expression. Invoking or singing Boann’s name while sitting next to a river or stream can be a very powerful and inspiring experience. Clear the mind, open the soul, and listen to the music of Boann playing from the waters. You will always go away a new person.
Vigil at the Well
A rock ledge. A dark pool.
Pale dawn and cold rain.
And a woman alone
holding three coins.
She circles the well
three times in the rain.
She offers the coins
to a great ancient tree
then bends to the pool.
A glimmer of silver.
Dawn striking the pool?
A fish in its depths?
The pool stills again.
The sky blazes red.
The woman gets up.
Nothing seems changed.
But the next day a wind
blows warm from the sea.
Boann suite de reels
On Contemplating a Sheep’s Skull ~ Poem by: John Kinsella
All images taken in the Nier valley, county waterford
Fujifilm X100
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
On Contemplating a Sheep’s Skull
Poem by John Kinsella
A sheep’s Skull aged so much in rain and heat,
broken jawbone and chipped teeth half-
gnaw soil; zippered fuse-mark tracks
back to front, runs through to base
of neck, widening faultline under
stress: final crack close at hand.
Skull I can’t bring myself to move.
White-out red soil unearthed
from hillside fox den and cat haven,
now hideaway for short-beaked echidna
toppling rocks and stones, disrupting
artfulness a spirit might impose,
frisson at seeing counterpoint.
Skull I can’t bring myself to move.
Sometimes avoid the spot to avoid
looking half-hearted into its sole
remaining eye socket; mentally to join
bones strewn downhill, come apart
or torn from mountings years before
arriving with good intentions.
Skull I can’t bring myself to move.
Not something you can ‘clean up’,
shape of skull is not a measure of all
it contained: weight of light and dark,
scales of sound, vast and varied taste
of all grass eaten from these hills;
slow and steady gnawing at soil.
Skull I can’t bring myself to move.
Neither herbivore nor carnivore,
earth and sky-eater, fire in its shout
or whisper, racing through to leave a bed
of ash on which the mind might rest,
drinking sun and light and smoke,
choked up with experience.
Skull I can’t bring myself to move.
Drawn to examine
despite aversion, consider
our head on its shoulders,
drawn expression
greeting loved ones
with arms outstretched.
John Kinsella is Founding editor of the journal Salt in Australia; he serves as international editor at the Kenyon Review. His most recent volume of poetry is Divine Comedy: Journeys through a Regional Geography (W. W. Norton) with a new volume, Disturbed Ground: Jam Tree Gully/Walden, due out with W.W. Norton in November 2011.
Sunday evening in the mountains
Mountain views of Country Kerry
Landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
In My Dreams I was traveling, Probably in my car, through the hills of Kerry, little valleys where everyday life is lived, A voice reproached me for squandering my time on trifles , instead of writing about the essence of life, which is such a so-ness.
Probably all my voyages in dreams have a model in one, very real, by car from cork to Kerry, A boggy road with ruts, always either up or down, stubble fields on the hills in the rain, here and there a spruce grove, then alders by streams,huts,well-sweeps.
Taken from : Czeslaw Milosz
Silent Sunday (Sing – A poem).
Sunset over Windgap, County kilkenny
Landscape photography by Nigel Borrington
Sunday and today I just wanted to be silent to be still and think of nothing, so often we hear the sound of voices around us, people who just cannot stop for fear of a gap.
The most I wanted to hear was a song, the song that nature makes on the hillsides.
So a poem for a Sunday evening :
Sing
Today seemed like a day I should be silent.
The silence seemed so absolute, every small sound
reverberating intensely.
My annoying voice would shatter such a perfect peace.
Perhaps a song.
If a song were to break out over this hillside,
causing the grass to move, that might be acceptable.
The silence their audience,
a brilliant song.
I wish it so, but I know my voice has not that song,
and in thinking so I find I’ve lost it altogether.
So I sit back, a supportive member of the audience.
So step up; we’re listening.
We silenced wait for your beautiful lucid song.
Someone to save us from the silence we trapped ourselves in,
afraid to break perfection.
Someone to tell us that imperfection is something that’s okay.
Your song can rescue us.
Your voice can come and let us sing again.
Let your music ring across this silence.
We’ll rise up, a chorus of flaws, and be beautiful.
Set us free.
Sing.
Sophiea · Oct 28, 2011
Sunday evenings – without angels, a poem by – Mario Rossi
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm lens, iso 50
A view of slievenamon, from the red gate
Landscape images from : Nigel Borrington
Sunday evening and the last light of the weekend is fading once more, I love this time of the week. Everything that happened last week is in the past and we have a new start for our week ahead.
So then a Poem :
Evening Without Angels
—Mario Rossi
the great interests of man: air and light,
the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness
of looking.
Why seraphim are arranged
Above the trees?
Air is air,
Its vacancy glitters round us everywhere.
Its sounds are not angelic syllables
But our unfashioned spirits realized
More sharply in more furious selves.
And light
That fosters seraphim and is to them
Coiffeur of haloes, fecund jeweller—
Was the sun concoct for angels or for men?
Sad men made angels of the sun, and of
The moon they made their own attendant ghosts,
Which led them back to angels, after death.
Let this be clear that we are men of sun
And men of day and never of pointed night,
Men that repeat antiquest sounds of air
In an accord of repetitions. Yet,
If we repeat, it is because the wind
Encircling us, speaks always with our speech.
Light, too, encrusts us making visible
The motions of the mind and giving form
To moodiest nothings, as, desire for day
Accomplished in the immensely flashing East,
Desire for rest, in that descending sea
Of dark, which in its very darkening
Is rest and silence spreading into sleep.
…Evening, when the measure skips a beat
And then another, one by one, and all
To a seething minor swiftly modulate.
Bare night is best. Bare earth is best. Bare, bare,
Except for our own houses, huddled low
Beneath the arches and their spangled air,
Beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire,
Where the voice that is in us makes a true response,
Where the voice that is great within us rises up,
As we stand gazing at the rounded moon.
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm lens, iso 50
A view of slievenamon, from the red gate
Landscape images from : Nigel Borrington
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm lens, iso 50
The red gate with a view of Slievenamon
Landscape images from : Nigel Borrington
The River Walk
Nikon D7000, 28mm f2.8 lens, iso 100
River Suir, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
The River Walk
By : Joshua Bosworth
Further up the river shall we go
The tangled trees above, mirrored below.
Throwing rocks, watching as the ripples spread
on Into our lives.
Nikon D7000, 28mm f2.8 lens, iso 100
River Suir, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
The thoughts within our head,
Fleeting moments as what stirs behind us
Embraced in a silence, no one can find us
Swinging, past, present, new laughs, old memory’s
faint whispers of a future, soon we’ll see.
Come further up the river with me.
.
An Irish sunset
Nikon D7000, 50mm f1.4 lens, iso 100
An Irish Sunset
Landscape photography By: Nigel Borrington
The last few days here in Ireland have been just wonderful, the weather has been like old times, long summer days in the sun and the country.
So time for a Poem :
by Lakota
As I lay in the grass,
The blades brushing against my neck,
I stare at the sky; washed with
orange; splashed with pink.
As the sun dips slowly lower,
fading from my near-distant sight.
Giving the gift of colour to the sky,
and I blink once, and it’s gone.
As I think of nature, love, and time,
I hear music, softly piercing my ears.
The pipes, and pan-flute, the beat of the bohdran and fiddle,
I let out a sigh of contentment, and close my eyes.
It’s here, that I’m home.
Sunday evenings, time for some sunset thinking.
Fujifilm x100, 35mm lens, iso 100
Lower Lake of Killarney, County Kerry
Irish Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington
Sunday evenings are to myself the end of another week, they mark a time to clear your mind. To think about a new week and to define the end of the last, what-ever happened last week (good or bad) has gone.
It time for some ……..
Sunset Thinking
Do you ever watch the sunset
And just sit and think about things
Just you and the sky and darkness
Giving your thoughts some wings
Perhaps you’ve got some troubles
And don’t know what to do
Or you just plain need to get away
To spend a little time with you
Sunset beauty makes you feel as though
Your life has meaning after all
To see a sight so extraordinary
Makes you feel capable, strong and tall
It’s funny how flashes of color
Like a sunset or sunrise can inspire
It can calm your inner self a bit
It’s a scene you can never tire
The serenity gives you a chance
To put things in perspective
Life can be overwhelming at times
And a sunset can be reflective
So when the sky lights up next time
Let your gaze do some drinking
Soak up all the amazing sights
And do some sunset thinking!
Written by : Marilyn Lott
I walked through an ancient path, woodland poems
Fujifilm x100, 35mm focus length, iso 800
Kilkenny woodlands
Landscape photography : Nigel Borrington
A woodland walk
I walked through ancient paths,
where hidden mysteries lay
beneath our feet
and a choir of birds sing out loud,
with jewels dancing in the air.
Scrunching feet walk along
the twisting paths which
zigzag their way through
tall giants. Giants who
stand next to us.
While stepping on the
bones of the past,
sweet smells turn orange to red.
The giants form a roof with windows.
Sheltering the emerald flowers that
dapple the green carpet.
Spider webs shimmer like silver silk
as they whisper their secrets.
I walked those ancient paths.
………………………
A Woodland Walk
I took a walk today,
where the trees like giants,
held up the sky.
The breeze tickled the leaves
Many people have walked
on these ancient paths,
Discovering hidden secrets,
Foxes hiding in the shadows,
birds calling from the tree tops.
I took a walk today
and passed a trickling stream,
Where leaves crunched underfoot.
Water ran over boulders,
as it tumbled down the bank.
In the dappled shade,
jewel like light hits the ground.
Flies hang in the air, dancing.
What a wonderful walk!
Spirit
Spirit
Wading in a river of beauty and vibrant light,
A stream of emotion where words have no sound,
In silence of feelings so ‘noisily’ present,
Invading the ‘space’, no invite, but welcomed.
In colours of raindrops entering Whole,
Captivates, Inspires, Instils formless form,
Facets of dreamtimes, of Faeries and wishes,
The Drum-Beat ‘awakens’ the feelings of Calm.
Dancing in a river of beauty and vibrant light,
A waterfall of emotion where words feel no force,
An earthquake of feelings so tenderly entered,
Accepted in Space, invited and warm.
Poem By : Ri
Pagan’s and the Immortal Spirit
Pagan’s have a belief in the immortality of the spirit and in the unending cycles of the Seasons and life itself: birth, death, and rebirth. They believe that the spirit is nature itself. Life and its Spirit is in every part of everything that surrounds us, it cannot be separated from it. Pagan God’s take their form as a part of this, they have to respect life and nature just like we do. Even though they control individual elements they cannot ignore all the other gods and their elements in doing so.
Nigel Borrington 
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