Capturing the world with Photography, Painting and Drawing

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Seven day Black and white photo challenge! : Secrets of the world around you …..

The whole world around you
Nigel borrington

The above board located at the Anne Valley Walk, county Waterford reads as follows :

Watch with glittering eyes
The whole world around you
because the greatest secrets
are hidden in the most unlikely places
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it !!!

Finding Nature ……

Seven day Black and white photo challenge! : Forestry

Seven day Black and white photo challenge!
Day 1

Yesterday on my facebook page I was tagged by a great photo blogger and friend Sharon Walters Knight to take part in a seven day black and white photo challenge !

Day 1: Is this image from one of our local forests. Forest floor matting , When the forest workers finish clearing and area of woodland they save a lot of branches for matting, this matting is used to lay down tracks for their heavy machines to drive over , these roads of sticks save the environment along with many insects and plant life including seeds.

While not a stunning image as such, I felt it just captured a part of the processes involved in forestry

3 Times and You Lose , Lyrics by Travis

Callan County Kilkenny 2

Callan county Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington

3 Times and You Lose

Travis

I had a nightmare
I lived in a little town
Where little dreams were broken
And words were seldom spoken
I tried to reach you
But all the lines were down
And so the rain began to fall
On this little town
… On this little town

The little people
Had very little left to say
Their words had all been shortened
It didn’t really seem important
And I had a feeling
That you were very far away
But then a little voice inside me said
“you’ll never get away from here”
And it’s 1, 2,
3 Times and you lose

Of course it doesn’t matter how you say it
I’m all out of luck
So there’s nothing really more to say
I’m throwing it all away
Well we had opinions
But now we all think the same
We never look at one another
Only when the other suffers
And I thought I saw you
But it…

Here I Am Still Breathing ! A Poem For The Brokenhearted by : Andrew Voigt

Top Withens
Also known as Top Withins is a ruined farmhouse near Haworth, West Yorkshire,
This farmhouse is associated with “Wuthering Heights”, the Earnshaw home in Emily Brontë’s novel
Nigel Borrington

I felt this poem by Andrew Voigt matched this great location on the yorkshire moors very well !

Here I Am Still Breathing

A Poem For The Brokenhearted

The night is dark and I’m alone
Searching for a place called home
Silence rings within my ears
Fear and pain flood my tears

Hope feels far, isolation nears
What if God isn’t really there?
Well, maybe I simply fail at dreams
A hollow chord with broken strings

Stars go black, night turns grey
Light is gone, far from day
Will the sun rise once again?
A distant dream, a long-lost friend?

Maybe I simply can’t understand
A single word of this master plan
It hurts like hell, my spirit screams
Life in the land of broken dreams

I sit back down to concentrate
Reminded of the things I hate
Depression, fear, regrets of time
Desiring just to press rewind

Yet, here I am still breathing
This heartbeat song unending
This life is still worth living
This life is still worth living

I pick myself up off the floor
Remnants of the mask I’ve worn
Face the mirror while it stares back
Accepting all the things I lack

Reflections often mirror shame
Yet, tonight they simply aren’t the same
Within the tears upon my face
A light reflects in a darkened space

Could it be the day awakes?
The winter gone, new hopes to chase?
Well, maybe I’m just seeing things
Like a blind man lost in the midnight sea

But what if hope still remains?
And what if love is not in vain?
Could there be a God of love?
Who walked this earth and gave his blood?

My head is spinning within these thoughts
Could God really care for souls so lost?
We turned our backs and swore His name
Yet, still He loves us in our shame

Yes, here I am still breathing
This heartbeat song unending
This life is still worth living
This life is still worth living

Andrew Voigt

Andrew Voigt is a writer and blogger discussing thoughts on God, dreams, and brokenness. He has served as a contributing writer for publications such as Patheos, Fathom Magazine, and Kingdom Spark. Andrew holds a B.S. in Communication Studies from Liberty University and lives in Charlotte, NC with his wife and orange cat named Pumpkin.

Sailing to Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats

Sailing to Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats Image Nigel Borrington

Sailing to Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Autumn Within, By: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Autumn Within
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is autumn; not without
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves
Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves,
Comes no murmur from the mill.

Autumn Within
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Friday poetry : Ghost House Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963

Culzean Castle
Nigel Borrington

Ghost House
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad—
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had

Independent Heart, a poem by : Jodie Moore

Independent Heart

Soft words you spoken
From the heart that is broken
I know deep inside
You have a level of independence
With a mystery of suspense
You are recovering
Waiting for someone
To catch on to the discovering
Of the real you
With a heart so true
Giving of your best
Expecting nothing less
While hurt is making amends
Leaning on loving friends
Accounted for in time you spend
With words you write
Not giving into a broken hearts flight
Staying strong
Carrying others like me along