Thursday, December 9, 2010

wind and water

the wind seems desolate
and emotionless today

it wavers
swaying from side-to-side
and then rushes onwards
headstrong and careless

sometimes though
i can hear its voice
dropping to a whisper
i can feel it
slowing down -
almost stopping

and in those places
i find
a delicate frozen painting
as carefully crafted
as any man or woman could wish
or imagine


a gift of wind and water

15 comments:

Linda Sue said...

WOW that is beyond cool in every sense of the word! Looks like a fancy badge for a Norse king's night marshal...The close up looks very like an xray of finger bones- some other worldly creature...GREAT! I would like to felt that image!

Lorenzo — Alchemist's Pillow said...

A gift it is indeed to spot, celebrate and share these wonders, which are always all around us but so often go unheeded. When I first saw the photo, I thought it was ice on a knot in wood, before realizing it was a frozen puddle in a dirt track. I sort of like that type of 'confusion' ...

Bonnie Zieman, M.Ed. said...

Like Lorenzo I am amazed how much it looks like a knot in wood in the first image. And once I read what Linda Sue wrote about it looking like an xray image of finger bones in the second, I was amazed! I've been looking at a lot of xrays recently of my arm and hand (with each visit back to the orthepedic surgeon) and the resemblance is quite uncanny.

Reya Mellicker said...

The frozen masterpieces are beautiful, yes yes. But the winter wind? Not my favorite. He's too sharp for me, too metallic.

You're so generous.

steven said...

linda sue - i was riding back from north of peterborough and i crossed a bridge and saw these puddles - frozen - beneath me. so i climbed down a hill with my bike - well slipped and slided - and brought their images home. i'm so glad you liked them as well as i did. steven

steven said...

lorenzo i like it's apparent randomness, knowing that there's some sort of order expressed in the process with which it froze. steven

steven said...

bonnie - water bones - i love the rounded swirls - of frozen water much more than bone! steven

steven said...

reya - the wind yes the wind. my friend and then not my friend. i'll be on my bicycle in twenty minutes. the air temperature is minus fifteen celsius. the wind drops it another four degrees. i stay warm - after the first five minutes or so - but the extra work of pushing against the wind is tough when you're already working hard!!! but the satisfaction of pushing past his sharp metallic fingers is really really good!!! peaceful day. steven

R. Burnett Baker said...

Steven, fantastic photo and poem! I'm amazed at how you are so intimately in tune with your immediate surroundings, and how you see and bring to life the art of details most of us simply never notice.

And I suspect it takes no extra time at all to see these treasures if we simply change our maddening pace.

Rick

Tess Kincaid said...

Your capture of these frozen paintings are marvelous. Thank you, Steven. xx

steven said...

hey rick - there's so much to this place that really it's just a matter of being available to it. having said that, i don't think i was in that space at all until a handful of years ago and maybe not as deeply as i am until two years ago. i can't explain it. i know that it's one step on the ladder and that there's a lot of ladder left to climb!! steven

steven said...

tess - it was incredible fortune and then also chance. but i saw them from about a hundred feet away crossing a bridge about thirty feet above them. seeing them, negotiating the descent, the ascent and then too the cold that day - a damp cold - that got inside my head and then my hands and feet. a really lovely image that nature created. steven

Joanna said...

Stunning photos that stop me in my tracks. Your artist's eye shared with all of us is a daily treat.
Thanks, Steven

Dejemonos sorprender said...

M, beautiful pictures and words.. i liked..

Jinksy said...

Another beautiful meld of words and pictures...