Capturing the world with Photography, Painting and Drawing

Posts tagged “poetry

Where the Rivers Flow

Sigma SD15
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
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.


On An Apple-Ripe September Morning

Kilkenny apples in September
An Apple-ripe September morning.
Irish Landscape Photography,
Kilkenny based photographer : Nigel Borrington

On An Apple-Ripe September Morning

Patrick Kavanagh

Round Bales black and white 2

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.


Monday mornings. A poem: When the fishing boats go out.

Monday Morning all at sea
Fishing boat setting to sea, Youghal, county Cork
Landscape Photography : Nigel Borrington

Monday Morning – setting to sea

Monday morning and it is that time of the week when I am always looking somehow to get my mind and body moving.

Some little time back I stayed for a week down near Youghal, county Cork. Each Morning I would watch the boats heading out to sea, very early each day they would slowly disappear over the horizon.

Just to help me start my own day and the week ahead I found this Poem by Lucy Montgomery.

When the Fishing Boats Go Out

Lucy Montgomery

When the lucent skies of morning flush with dawning rose once more,
And waves of golden glory break adown the sunrise shore,
And o’er the arch of heaven pied films of vapor float.
There’s joyance and there’s freedom when the fishing boats go out.

The wind is blowing freshly up from far, uncharted caves,
And sending sparkling kisses o’er the brows of virgin waves,
While routed dawn-mists shiver­oh, far and fast they flee,
Pierced by the shafts of sunrise athwart the merry sea!

Behind us, fair, light-smitten hills in dappled splendor lie,
Before us the wide ocean runs to meet the limpid sky­
Our hearts are full of poignant life, and care has fled afar
As sweeps the white-winged fishing fleet across the harbor bar.

The sea is calling to us in a blithesome voice and free,
There’s keenest rapture on its breast and boundless liberty!
Each man is master of his craft, its gleaming sails out-blown,
And far behind him on the shore a home he calls his own.

Salt is the breath of ocean slopes and fresher blows the breeze,
And swifter still each bounding keel cuts through the combing seas,
Athwart our masts the shadows of the dipping sea-gulls float,
And all the water-world’s alive when the fishing boats go out.


On Contemplating a Sheep’s Skull ~ Poem by: John Kinsella

the sheeps skull 1
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.

the sheeps skull 2

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.

the sheeps skull 3

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

Sunday on 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).

Sunday evening in county KIlkenny
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

Images from the road the landscape 2
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.

Images from the road the landscape 1
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm lens, iso 50
A view of slievenamon, from the red gate
Landscape images from : Nigel Borrington

Images from the road the gate
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm lens, iso 50
The red gate with a view of Slievenamon
Landscape images from : Nigel Borrington


The River Walk

An evening by the river 2
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.

An evening by the river 1
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

An evening by the river 3
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.

The weekends fading light
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

In wild woodlands 2
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.

In wild woodlands 3

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

In wild woodlands 4

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!

More woodland Poems


Spirit

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.


Images from the river bank – river Suir county Tipperary

Images from the banks of the river suir 1
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm f3.5-4.5 lens, iso 50, tripod mounted.
Images from the banks of the river suir, clonmel, County Tipperary
Landscape photogrpahy by , Nigel Borrington

The River Suir that runs through county Tipperary and Waterford before reaching the sea at the ring of hook and the hook head light house is one of Ireland most Beautiful rivers in the country, many people have painted, photographed and written book on this river.

These images are from a walk I took last evening with Molly our Golden retriever.

I found this poem from a local woman, living in Carrick-on-suir

A Personal Poem by Maura Murphy
Published on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Maura Murphy, Collins Park, Carrick-on-Suir while a patient at Waterford Regional Hospital recently, penned the following poem about her adopted home- town and the river Suir that flows through it.

River of Memories Reflector of Light / Timeless, Endless, Hidden Might / I Recall Happy Walks, Children in Tow / Watching the Fishermen, Swans in a Row / Throw Sticks in the Water, Who’ll Win the Race / In Summer the Swimmers Showing their Pace / You are the Town, You Gave it it’s Name / All Gained from your Bounteous Supply of Free Game / The Trout and the Salmon Kept Starvation at Bay / Put Food on the Table for Many each Day / As You go on Your Journey, From Source to the Sea / I Thank You for the Joy You Have Brought to Me / For the Picnics, the Laughter, the Fun and the Games / In my Happy Memory They ever Remain.

The river Suir Wiki

Images from the banks of the river suir 2
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm f3.5-4.5 lens, iso 50, tripod mounted.
Images from the banks of the river suir, clonmel, County Tipperary
Landscape photogrpahy by , Nigel Borrington

Images from the banks of the river suir 3
Sigma sd15, 15-30mm f3.5-4.5 lens, iso 50, tripod mounted.
Images from the banks of the river suir, clonmel, County Tipperary
Landscape photogrpahy by , Nigel Borrington


The To-be-forgotten By Thomas Hardy

The to be forgotten

The To-be-forgotten
By Thomas Hardy
.

I
I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile among the tombs around:
“Wherefore, old friends,” said I, “are you distrest,
Now, screened from life’s unrest?”

II
—”O not at being here;
But that our future second death is near;
When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
And blank oblivion comes!

III
“These, our sped ancestry,
Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
Nor shape nor thought of theirs can you descry
With keenest backward eye.

The forgotten at rest 3

IV
“They count as quite forgot;
They are as men who have existed not;
Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;
It is the second death.

V
“We here, as yet, each day
Are blest with dear recall; as yet, can say
We hold in some soul loved continuance
Of shape and voice and glance.

VI
“But what has been will be —
First memory, then oblivion’s swallowing sea;
Like men foregone, shall we merge into those
Whose story no one knows.

VII
“For which of us could hope
To show in life that world-awakening scope
Granted the few whose memory none lets die,
But all men magnify?

VIII
“We were but Fortune’s sport;
Things true, things lovely, things of good report
We neither shunned nor sought … We see our bourne,
And seeing it we mourn.”


By the lake, a poem

By the lake
Sigma SD15, 18-50mm lens, iso 50
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington

By the lake : By Jon Coe

I watched the ripples, as I drifted away
the lake was deep, on this golden day
Lured by reflection, in this tranquil deep
I lost my mind, then I fell asleep

Trees were talking, murmured rustling leaves
sunlight glistened, on catkin weaves
Dragonflies, and fish that spawn
could not awake me, from this dawn

Images from the lake
.

I floated far and I drifted near
there was no time, as was not fear
Taken away, on this autumn noon
stars were shining, behind the moon

When crickets struck their evening call
the bullfrog chirped, his sombre all
And as the sunset shone, upon this land
the moon took me quietly, by the hand

I stretched and weeped, the night, it fell
I returned my spirit, to this inspired shell
The lake, my friend, shall always be
my place of relaxation, next to, and within me


Image from the Waterford coast.

Waterford Coast
Sigma SD15, 18-50mm lens,iso 50
Waterford coastline, June 2013
Irish landscape photography : Nigel Borrington

Last evening I went for a drive and stopping the car, I walked along the Waterford coastline. At some point I sat down and looked at the views. Just taking some time to really look!, we spend most of our life’s thinking and talking, watching tv and living other peoples life’s not our own.

Maybe! we should find a space, a space for our own life’s, a space in which we can grow something called “a mind of our own….”, this isn’t a sin! to give yourself time, to be individual.

So then, a Poem

Cool sea laps against the rocks,
following the sands of time,
Sometimes the sea seems suspended like a clear mirror reflecting peace
and sometimes the sea rages, undeniable in it’s quest to never cease.

People can gaze upon it and think they have found a reason to exist,
others gaze and see themselves and begin a peace with tomorrow.
But only the waters of the sea’s stay
yet the tides come and go and seem to show time drifting away.

One picture is not enough nor will any amount,
as the sea is all of them and none of them, calm and smooth or angry and rough.
It keeps the wheels of the world turning more than a single life,
as it will always be their giving life and gaining the respect it always should.

Time and space ….


Security – A Poem by : William Stafford

The island county cork
Nikon D700, 200mm focus length, iso 200
The Island off Ballymacoda, county cork, Ireland
Irish Landscape photography : Nigel Borrington

Security

Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.

Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven’t let that happen, but after
I’m gone others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.

So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
you find, and after a while you decide
what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,
you turn to the open sea and let go.

William Stafford


Merge – (a poem by : Kadambari Kashyap)

Merge
Sigma Sd15, 18-50 f2.8 lens, iso 50
Spirit of place, public sculpture, County Kilkenny
Photography by : Nigel Borrington

Poem By : Kadambari Kashyap.

When our spirits merge…
I or You won’t be there anymore,
But us.

There won’t be anyone talking,
Rather our souls would sing in
Ecstatic harmony.
In a language unknown.

When our spirits merge
There will be nothing left
But we will burn
As the sun and stars do every moment.

When our spirits merge
All things will come to an end
But to start again.
In a new form
In a new desire…

And as we make way for something new
In our sweet surrender
To each other
we will be healed
healed of the entire past
of me, you and the rest…

In that surrender, something
Will be on fire, death will inevitably
Consume it.
And soon after that
Divine creativity will bloom out
When our spirits will burn and merge.


Sunset on the River

a evening by the river bank

Sunset on the River

Jan Weeratunga, South Africa

Reds, pinks, oranges and gold’s catch the edge of the clouds and slowly turn the evening sky into a canvas waiting to be painted.
The sun’s last ray’s bounce off the cloud’s lining as it sinks gradually beyond the horizon.

Playfully the rays dance off the shimmering surface of the river,
Another fish jumps from the water,
Sending a concertina of ripples to the riverbank’s shoreline.

Golden waves approach as the setting sun sinks slowly below the horizon,
And small waves lap the side of our boat in an unending regular rhythm.

The repetitive knocking of the fender against the hull takes on the beat of the river,
Tapping the boat and shoreline alike,
It’s constant rhythm disturbed only by the wake of a passing boat or water bird landing on its surface.

Crickets join in with their own percussion as the melody is taken up by the surrounding birdlife,
Each chorus, their evening song as they head along the river bank in search of their nights roost.
Insects buzz over the surface, darting this way and that,
As swallows swoop swiftly, snapping them up in their gaping beaks.

Against the Western horizon a kingfisher dives into calmer waters bathed in a glorious warm orange light.
To the East the night’s first star is born,
It shimmers and shivers into life,
Just as the river serenely falls to sleep.

Peace is coming to the river as the ‘time between times’ –
That suspended few minutes of sunset –
Links all things in this world in a glorious golden moment before darkness descends.

Gradually the river slips into sleep
And the moon begins to rise and perform her dance across the waters glassy surface;
Replacing her brothers golden rays with her own silver ones.

Silver shimmering light bathes all beneath it,
Only disturbed by an occasional fish breaking free of its watery surrounds,
To be touched and blessed by the moonlight,
Before diving back down to the river bed.

The moon arches across the night sky,
Playing with the stars,
Until her brothers warming rays tell her it is once again time to allow the miracle of night and day to exchange places.

a morning by the river bank
.
At first only a thin glowing red streak spreads along the tree line,
But quickly the shades of red are replaced by orange and then yellow,
And as the sun wakes from its nights slumber,
Dawn summons us from sleep,
And the tempo of waves against the boats hull increase with the blaze of activity that is engulfing the river,

And the throbbing beat signals a new day is beginning.


The bronze crabs of Galway bay

galway crab shells 2
Nikon D700, 105mm macro lens, iso 400
Crab shell at Galway bay
Nature photography, Kilkenny photographer : Nigel Borrington

I came across these grab shells on a beach at the far end of Galway bay last year and there were hundreds of them, crabs molt their shells every time they have out grown them, some people think that this is at the turn of a new moon.

A Poem :

A Green Crab’s Shell

by Mark Doty

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like–

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws’

gesture of menace
and power. A gull’s
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
–size of a demitasse–
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer’s firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this–
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.

galway crab shells 1
Nikon D700, 105mm macro lens, iso 400
Crab shell at Galway bay
Nature photography : Nigel Borrington

Molting: How Crabs Grow

Adult Tanner crab mating

Crabs (and other crustaceans) cannot grow in a linear fashion like most animals. Because they have a hard outer shell (the exoskeleton) that does not grow, they must shed their shells, a process called molting. Just as we outgrow our clothing, crabs outgrow their shells. Prior to molting, a crab reabsorbs some of the calcium carbonate from the old exoskeleton, then secretes enzymes to separate the old shell from the underlying skin (or epidermis). Then, the epidermis secretes a new, soft, paper-like shell beneath the old one. This process can take several weeks.


Monday morning

Monday Morning starts 2
Nikon D700, iso 100
Monday Morning sky over kilkenny
Nigel Borrington

Monday morning and well its a slow one in my mind anyway, empty of plans and reasons to get going and I don’t truly know why.

So maybe its time to go hunting for a poem or two and have a Monday morning coffee :

Monday Morning Coffee

Most people don’t look forward to Monday mornings…
I do.
It’s the start of something new…
It’s a clean slate
I like my Monday morning ritual
I wake up extra early.
Well,
It’s early for me.
I get ready for work.

Monday Morning starts 1
Nikon D700, iso 100
Monday Morning sky over kilkenny
Nigel Borrington

Hopeful,
That it will be a pretty good week.
I don’t even have to ask anymore
An extra large coffee waits for me
And a
Perfect
Cloud
Melt in your mouth
Beautiful in it’s simplicity
Glazed Doughnut
Friendly faces and a delicious treat
It’s a great way for me to start my week..

My Monday morning
Look forward to it treat.


A Dad I Didn’t Even Get To Meet

In Dad room
Nikon D7000, 18-200mm vr2 lens, iso 100
A chair for the dad I did’t even get to meet
Nigel Borrington

A Poem by : Brandy poole

I never even knew you
but deep inside I knew
you were out there waiting
for me to find you

days and months past
years flew by too
till that day
I finally found you

the grass was so green
the dirt so rich
there stood your headstone
with your name engraved in it

I couldn’t believe
to my surprise
you lay to rest
oh dear, oh my!!

my father so dear
I’m too late
God has taken you
to heaven above

I cried so softly
for my dad I never knew
oh why oh why
please tell me what to do

so many questions not answered
the things wanted to say
please God tell me
why did you take my daddy away


Friends

A friend indeed! : Nandi Mhlongo

Two friends at the National Botanic Gardens 1

I have a friend, a friend in word & a friend indeed.
A friend who loves me with all friends being & I love friend too.
My friend rejuvenates me
A friend of my youth,
A friend indeed!

Two friends at the National Botanic Gardens 4

I have a friend in word, my friend reminds me of my purpose in life
I can exhale with my friend by my side
My friend is good to me
A friend indeed!

Two friends at the National Botanic Gardens 2

When my friend is gone, I miss my friend already
But my friend has gone home because I am home for now
But the truth is our home is in our friendship.
I have a friend, a friend indeed!

My friend in word is my friend indeed and my friend in need.
Friendship is all we need & we have.
I have a friend a friend indeed!

Two friends at the National Botanic Gardens 3
Nikon D700, 24mm focus length, iso 100
National Botanic Gardens, Dublin
Nigel Borrington

All images Taken at the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin 2012