I cannot imagine this guy’s story. He flew up to ogle our tortilla chips when we were sitting facing out over the bluffs of San Carlos Bay, Sonora, Mexico. This toothpick or porcupine quill-shaped object was poking straight up out of his skull and must have been embedded there.
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/04/26/cees-odd-ball-photo-challenge-2015-week-17/
Early Birds at the Beach
When I am at the beach, the first light of day for me is always the moon, which is still up at 6 when I begin my beach walk. If I’m lucky, I’ll make it the 5 miles to Boca de Iguana and back before the sun is fully up. Much as I love sunlight, my particular pigment demands that I enjoy it from the shade.
As the sun comes up but does not yet peek over the mountains and palm trees, the birds and I comb the beach. I find an already-drying starfish. The Caracara bird finds a fish, the sandpipers and gulls various delicacies barely buried in the sand. Before me, I see only two earlier human birds than I, their evidence left by their footprints.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/early-bird/
One day’s rewards for a very early beach walk. My other rewards were the shots I got of other early morning visitors finding their own rewards, as pictured in the other two shots. All pictures taken in La Manzanilla, Mexico.
Click on pictures to enlarge. Go here for more good photos on the topic of Reward.
Blue-footed Booby
Graceful Vee of wing and curve of neck
laid out in sea foam on the beach—
it is as though you are making a final goofy move
on feet dressed up in blue first for dancing and then for love.
The means of your death is less a mystery to me
than what has left you and where it is now.
Perhaps, as I cup my hand through air above you,
I hold a part of you not soon enough departed.
Remembering those tiny sea turtles,
alone in the sea for moments,
picked off by the birds,
these mysteries worry me
like tiny flippers
resisting
that next great adventure
of the inside of a pelican
as I finally understand why anyone
would choose to have their ashes scattered at sea.
I have always dreaded descent
to the ocean’s dark floor,
when I could have been imagining
washing up on a favorite shore.
The Prompt: This week its all about roads, paved or unpaved.
First of all, here’s a little background music for you to view these pictures by. You’re in for a treat if you do listen to Norah Jones singing her rendition of Long Way Home.
Some roads less permanent than others, but still roads
Making tracks on tracks
Sometimes the road becomes the traveler.
What happens to roads during a heavy storm in La Manzanilla.
(Click on photos to enlarge)
Here are three poems that I wrote while being held prisoner on my porch for two days waiting for the internet man. He came after a half dozen phone calls and a half dozen promises to be there in 1/2 hour, but never did get my internet up, so I’m sitting in a closed palapa restaurant in the dark, listening to the surf and using their internet, which I’ve paid them to use. I actually had a wonderful day spent watching the pelicans, fishermen and frigate birds, then went way out and did my exercises in the ocean, watching the sunset. There were fishermen and little boys on boogie boards all around me…and a young girl standing on a paddle board and paddling back and forth between me and the sunset.
Beachside Refractions
When I wake up at six that man
is out collecting bait.
And he is still out fishing
when the sun goes down at eight.
I guess that staring at water
and at the sky is fun,
for in the week I’ve been here,
he’s only landed one!
The tide comes in each morning,
bringing us new gifts;
transforming everything to sand
it sifts and sifts and sifts.
The frigate birds sail over all:
the headland and the town.
I don’t know what they’re looking for.
They never venture down.
A string of pelicans fly north.
Seconds later, they fly south.
guess the reason is not one
has fish within its mouth.
The beach cat sits here looking
out to the open sea,
willing all the fisherman
to “Bring a fish to me!”
The tide comes within feet of me
when it is at its height.
Tucked away here, in the shade,
I do not feel its bite.
When tide goes out, I go with it
to float beyond its curl.
It does not know if I am fish
or shell or boat or girl.
All the local folks collect
each evening at the beach.
Sand within their sandals,
and tequila within reach.
They talk the long day over
and orchestrate the sun
to sink beneath the seascape
to prove the day is done.
They come to view the sunset,
though they talk into the night.
It cannot be the sun they seek,
for it’s gone out of sight.
When most go home still one or two
stay to feel the night.
Their voices drift over the sand
sibilant and slight.
Whispers, merely whispers
by the time they get to me.
Unconnected syllables
for which I have no key.
The moon has not yet risen
and the stars are hidden by cloud.
And all the words that wait for me
are not yet voiced aloud.
All around me, darkest night
surrounds me like a womb.
I think words wait for me in dreams
just in the other room.
……..
Pelicans
They float upon the gentle swells,
with chins tucked in politely.
Of all the birds, most dignified,
their movements never sprightly.
They look like grumpy butlers
named Oliver or Jeeves
in morning coats of softest gray
with wings tucked in their sleeves.
They may be only scouting
the source of their next meal,
for soon they take off to the air
with energy and zeal.
And soon they’re diving down again,
straight like an arrow shot,
into the water’s surface
to see what can be caught.
Bobbing once again,
they lift their bills and then let slide
all that’s in their pouches
to another place inside.
I wonder if the fishes flop
all the long way down,
and this is why the pelicans
then fold their arms and frown?
………………..
The Magnificent Frigate Bird
They polonaise up higher,
far above the rest.
Not once dipping to the land.
Do they ever nest?
I never see them fishing,
foraging or chewing.
As though their wings are made for art
but are not made for doing.
A gentle crease within their wings
looks folded and unfolded,
but keeps its shape no matter what,
as though it has been molded.
This rhyme is not so fragile
nor so graceful as these birds.
I guess such elegance as theirs
cannot be caught in words.
The Prompt: Leftovers Sandwich—Today, publish a post based on unused material from a previous piece –a paragraph you nixed, a link you didn’t include, a photo you decided not to use. Let your leftovers shine! https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/leftovers-sandwich/
In my editing of both of these pelican photos, I was striving for a painterly quality.
Google ‘Villa Salvador” in Lima, Peru, for the fascinating story behind this picture. It was taken in their communal kitchen, used to feed those without jobs for a a limited period while they search for employment.
“Found Still-life” Lima, Peru.
Detail of my retablo, “Rabbit in the Moon”
For more “Sapphire” photos, go to: http://jennifernicholewells.com/2014/11/11/one-word-photo-challenge-sapphire/
The Prompt: Buyers, Beware? The year is 2214, and your computer’s dusty hard drive has just resurfaced at an antique store. Write a note to the curious buyer explaining what he or she will find there.
My Retablo, “Autobiography”
If you long for mystery,
poems, facts and history,
long perambulations
and wild exaggerations,
recipes and letters and
episodes of Homeland,
Elementary, Sherlock, Friends,
a blogging site that never ends,
Emails, Youtube, Facebook notes,
starts of novels, copied quotes,
OkCupid pictures of
possibilities for love,
notes from nice guys, threats from creeps,
notes from guys who play for keeps,
friends who only write when drunk,
chain e-mails, jokes and other junk,
two hundred drafts of my third book,
(each one different, have a look),
kids stories and their illustrations,
the Christmas plans of my relations,
photographs of my whole life—
its happiness and pain and strife—
some successes but also follies,
fireworks, insects, gardens, dollies,
travel snaps and friendly faces,
rooms at home or foreign places,
birds and children, beaches, skies,
the camera lens is true and wise
and not as given to fraud and lies
as writings filtered through the eyes
of one who feels the joys or pains
of what she witnesses, then deigns
to try to change her reader’s mind
to accord with the type or kind
of thoughts she carries deep inside:
pride’s cutting edge, love’s waning tide—
things lovely, funny, jarring, rare.
So read this hard drive if you dare,
but if you fear a life laid bare,
I have one word for you. Beware.
Photo Prompt: Descent—This week, show us your interpretation of descent.
You’ve seen this shot of a hot air balloon that has burst into flame and that is plummeting toward earth once before, but it is so perfect for this prompt that it is appearing for an encore performance. I guess I should mention that it was unmanned!
Searching for a place to land on Candelabra Island, Peru. I believe these are cormorants but I’m open to correction! One lonely pelican seems to have gotten in with the wrong crowd.
Peru Desert, descending to an oasis.
More Peru desert
Amazon Sunset. Does the descent of the sun count?
During the rainy season, flying termites descend by the tens of thousands, entering houses under sliding glass doors, through keyholes and hairline cracks. They swirl around any light like dervish planets, then chew their wings off and worm their way into any vulnerable wood. I think they mate somewhere along the way as well, or perhaps they chew their wings off in frustration over being those wallflowers left without a mate. At any rate, I was dumb enough to leave my pool light on and the next morning awoke to find thousands of insects such as these, pinned upside down by their wings in the water.
Those nimble few who had managed to chew their own wings off then stood on their detached wings or the wings of others as they helped them to chew their wings off.
Once free of their wings, they either swam to safety, found spare wings to use as flotation devices or swam off to aid other termites held captive by their wings in a crucifix position. It was both ghastly and fascinating and a huge cleanup operation!
Another Candelabra Island, Peru descent.
Thousands of white pelicans winter on Lake Chapala, Mexico, where I live. These are a very few making a landing after their descent.
The rain falls
fresh as cucumbers
on cobblestones and tiles,
the dust of summer
washed from crevasses
and curves of stone and clay.
The air is cleansed
of the scent of primavera,
jacaranda
and flamboyant trees
and the whole world
breathes easily again.
Clouds dried up
by sunlight,
the silent birds
are flushed
from their covering leaves
and open in chorus
to the booming crack
of cohetes, splitting the air
in celebration
of Saint John the Baptist
who has baptized all
this day.
The Prompt: Seasonal Scents—S’mores, salty ocean breezes, veggie burgers on the grill, sweaty people on the bus — what’s the smell you associate the most with summer?
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 