
rocks and wood – front porch, light and shadow

rocks and water – Big Thompson Canyon, long exposure
images submitted for Dawn’s Monochrome Madness theme challenge: rocks

rocks and wood – front porch, light and shadow

rocks and water – Big Thompson Canyon, long exposure
images submitted for Dawn’s Monochrome Madness theme challenge: rocks
If I should live long,
Then perhaps the present days
May be dear to me,
Just as past time filled with grief
Comes quietly back in thought.
~Fujiwara no Kiyosuke


Standing at this Threshold
With uncertainty, I question:
What is it that I seek?
Protection? Compassion? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Completion?
Who is it that I beckon?
A father? A mother? A sister? A brother? A companion? A child? A god?
To be? To endure? To offer? To embrace? To validate?
An intentional presence that is drawn upon
A place and time of shadows, myths, and dreams?
Birthed within a family?
Matured within a relationship?
Nourished within a community?
Where the Stillness within Silence,
Affirms the exchange of life’s giving and taking,
Embraces the connection of life’s emotional threads, and
Observes the interdependence of life with non-judgmental awareness,
Yet, knows of a united oneness with another that can not be?
Since it can not be, do I yearn
To know integration through the formation of thought;
To see clarity through the flowing of ink; and
To feel completion through the act of creating?
And then, finally, within the stillness of silence,
I befriend
An internal companion with whom
There is an honoring of the who and what of which I am;
A woman, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a wife, a mother, an aunt, a grandmother, a great-grandmother.
I touch
With reverence the presence of all that was, is, and will be.
I release
The seeking, the beckoning, the yearning to the Winds of Change.
I with uncertainty, Step over this Threshold
Foreseeing a return
~bckofford

Creating sound within the frozen moments of a photograph – introduced by Ted Forbes in his discussions of rhythm and tempo.

Rhythm I – all around us are shapes that are pretty basic and similar to each other. We will see them repeating at regular intervals within nature, design, works of art, architecture, and photography

Rhythm II – the primary characteristic of rhythm is predictability and order.

Tempo – the means by which we display speed, movement, as well as the passing of time all within a frozen moment.
Have you heard the silence within a snow storm?

Sending gratitude to Wind Kisses for this week’s Lens-artists challenge: sound
his traveling hat
looking small…
mist ~Issa*

“his traveling hat.” The hat in question is a kasa: umbrella-hat. I picture Issa watching travelers departing in the early morning–perhaps from an inn. As their bodies blend in with the spring mist, all he can see now are the outlines of their umbrella-hats growing smaller and smaller. In this early haiku he shows that he has already mastered the art of using simple observation to suggest depths of meaning and feeling. Like Issa, we shall miss those who go before us, fading into nothing.
*cited: haikuguy.com
Day by day, day by day, and day by day,
quietly in the company of children I live,
In my sleeves, tiny embroidered balls, two or three.
Useless, intoxicated, in this peaceful spring.~Ryokan*

*cited:
Sky Above, Great Wind
K Tanahashi
I was a child,
Nostalgia seemed a small stamp:
I was here…
My mother was there.
When I grew up
Nostalgia became a ticket:
I was here…
My bride was there.
Years later,
Nostalgia was a little tomb:
I was outside…
My mother was inside.
And now,
My nostalgia is a shallow strait:
I am at here…
The mainland is there.
~ Yu Guang Zhong

“The Chinese expression for “nostalgia” is xiangchou, literally “village sadness.” …xiangchou describes the grief that accompanies the traveler who cannot find a way back to the home village…[it] is not a geographical predicament but a spiritual state of being. First he finds himself outside the mother as a tiny emblem of apartness, then he is the man who contemplates her tomb. The shallow waters of the Taiwan straits are, similarly, not only a spatial divide between the island and the mainland but a reminder of the longing for, and the impossibility of going back to, ancestral roots.” *
*cited: V Schwarcz (Bridge Across Broken Time)
Oh leaves, ask the wind which of you
Will be the first to fall. ~Soseki*

*cited in Jonathan Clements, The Moon in the Pines
None calls upon me, or remembers me in my mountain village.
On the reeds by the thin hedge, the Autumn winds are sighing.
~The Sarashina Diary, A.D. 1009-1059 (Diaries of Old Japan)

we tell stories
of the far mountains
’round the brazier ~Issa*

Stories, myths, and parables acknowledge and respect the unique individuality of each of us. Myths give voice, through their use of symbols, to what is hidden, unknown, or evasive. Stories that share the dynamics of human interactions silently plant a seed of personal truth in the dark component of each of us, waiting for the appropriate time to bloom and to nourish. They also illustrate the universal theme of suffering and its resolution. Parables, with their multiple levels of meaning, honor the unique perspective and understanding of both listener and speaker. These multiple layers of meaning touch what is salient to the reader and thus gift all readers with an invitation to define for self their own understanding, interpretation, and application.**
*cited: haikuguy.com
**Excerpts from B Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage
green leaves of spring,
harvest moon in autumn,
cool breezes in summer,
snow in winter …
A mind not clouded by ignorance,
the seasons of home.

Everything changes and nothing lasts forever
images submitted in response to slow shutter speed’s lens-artists challenge: weather. Weather is a specific event—like a rainstorm or hot day—that happens over a few hours, days or weeks. Climate is the average weather conditions in a place over 30 years or more.
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