Rush hour
There’s nothing I enjoy more
Than rush hour on the lake
When water, birds and light
Become beautiful abstract art.
For more artistic shots, please visit: Camera Critters.
Swan light
I do believe
The wings of the swan
Love the light of the setting sun.
“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.” — Mary Oliver
For more lovely light, please visit: Skywatch.
Burnished copper
On Earth Day, nature gave us the gift
Of big rolling skies and dramatic clouds;
Of our local jetty, finally revealed
As the ice melted away
To leave a lake of burnished copper.
The canopy of the sky
Seemed so close and so beautiful
That all we had to do was reach up
And touch it.
For more dramatic skies, please visit: Skywatch.
Snow fairies
I love it when the snow fairies come to visit:
Turning pine trees into candles;
Decorating reeds
With garlands of ice –
And giving them hair-dos
Made out of spiky crystals.
The sunlight filters through
Icy fairy art to warm a long-forgotten leaf
And to remind us that we are intertwined –
Together, we can make
The mundane magic.
For more fairytale worlds, please visit: Our World.
Golden lace
About a month ago, the ice was finally thick enough
For the snowplough to come and make an ice skating track around the lake.
This was happy news as I was finally able to walk over the lake
To enjoy the beauty of the setting sun
As it cast its net of light
And turned branches into golden lace.
I met a woman out with her camera too –
And for a few minutes, we shared a bond
As we enjoyed the simple gift of the sinking sun.
For more golden skies, please visit: Skywatch.
Floating in the pink
Winter’s freezing dawn
Creates an abstract work of art;
Trees rise ghostly
In deliciously cold lilac dresses;
And the ancient church
Floats in clouds of pink.
Cold and startling and beautiful –
Another gift from nature.
For more gifts, please visit: Skywatch.
Poem to heaven
The first time I saw this white wooden church
I gasped in amazement at its beauty.
It started out as a simple chapel built in the 1700s –
And then in the mid-1800s, it was expanded
And the old clock tower replaced with a new one.
The white wooden planking,
The delicate leaded windows –
Such simple and exquisite beauty
Iced with snow and love.
The lovely and talented RED has interviewed me. So, if you want to know more about me or my photography tips, then please do visit her and say hi. You can find her at Amazing Australian Adventures.
For more wonders, please visit: Our World.
Swan lake
Sometimes the silence and the grey
Descend so softly
That you can almost hear the peace of the cloudy reflections.
Later on, the moody skies
Turn purple
And the old jetty seems to stretch out
Towards the swans
Dancing on the edge of infinity.
For more moody skies, please visit: Skywatch.
Raindrops keep falling
It’s been an unusually mild and wet autumn so far…
The soft rain makes art out of a humble fence
And turns a bench into a diamond-studded wonder.
And best of all, it lends beauty
To the graceful head of a flower:
Reminding us that bowed is not defeated
And that the best thing to do when it rains
Is to let it.
For more grace, please visit: Our World.
Caramel surprise
There’s nothing sweeter
Than creeping outside in the chill of a misty sunrise
To discover toffee reflections,
And the deliciousness of caramel clouds;
To stand there in awe and wonder
Feeling so thankful
For the sweet sweet morning.
For more sweets, please visit: Skywatch.
Living in a painting
The other day, my daughter came home from school without her friend
And so she had time to dawdle on the ten-minute walk from the station.
Time to gasp in amazement at the colours of autumn,
To breathe in the serenity of mist and mellowness
As she walked along the lake.
She burst through the door and said,
“Now I understand why you’re always outside with your camera:
We live in a beautiful painting!”
(All these are early morning shots taken on the same day.)
For more lovely pictures, please visit: Our World
Be dazzled
You’re never too old
Or too young
To enjoy the rich, vibrant honey
Of a dazzling sunset
With your best buddy –
(Makes it even sweeter if you’re brother and sister).
Thank you everyone for entering my give-away. The lucky winner is the amazing Inner Chick - do visit and say hi to her!
Prepare to be bedazzled at Skywatch!
Postcard from July
July sent me a delicate gauze of web,
With golden sparkles instead of spiders;
A tiny fairy horse
Amid a meadow of flowers;
And the delight of a playful dog
With the summer sun in his coat.
For more postcards, please visit: Camera Critters.
Don’t forget you can still enter my give-away here.
Swan sunset
The rain clouds parted
To reveal a sky turned to copper
And a flaming sheet of water
For the swans to dance on.
For more fiery sunsets, please visit: Skywatch.
For other graceful creatures, please visit: Camera Critters.
Golden feathers
Sometimes –
When the light is right
And lies in golden ribbons on the water,
The ordinary (even if just the legs of a duck)
Becomes extraordinary.
For more magic, please visit: Camera Critters.
Nest of blossoms
How wonderful to live up high
In a nest of blossoms
And beauty.
If only we might fall like cherry blossoms in the spring
So pure and radiant. — Anonymous
For more beauty, please visit: Camera Critters.
Trilling times
When the silence of winter
Gives way to a wall of constant
Singing, trilling, warbling and chirping
By the birds of spring –
That, my friends, is a thing of wonder
And beauty.
For more cheep trills, please visit: Camera Critters.
The blossoms of life
A couple of weeks ago
I went to see the sakura, or Japanese cherry blossoms, in the centre of Stockholm.
Walking under the trees was like entering a fairytale cave –
And you couldn’t help feeling uplifted and joyous.
The cherry blossoms remind us of life itself:
Of its extreme beauty
And vibrant colour –
And they also remind us that life is fleeting.
So we need to bloom as beautifully as we can
While we can.
For more beauty, please visit: Our World.
Bubbly feelings
Spring is that celebration of
Bright surprises;
Of new buds daring to bloom.
It’s that warm fizzy feeling that bubbles up
From the inside in an explosion of petal and joy.
Sometimes, its dewiness trembles on a flower
So that it seems to swim in the air like a petalled fish.
And sometimes, those winter remnants remind us that endings
Can be the seeds of new beginnings.
For more spring beauty, please visit: Our World.
The symphony
The tree looks on
As if it knows the truth:
That the best symphony
Is the music of a sunset
And the laughter of a child with her dog.
For more musical skies, please visit: Skywatch.
Sun star
When the sun shines
And twinkles like the star it is…
That can only mean one thing:
The ice has melted
And the lake is now a golden bowl of water.
For more stars, please visit: Skywatch.
A colourful world
February is a a time where nothing much happens;
Where life unfolds with the rhythm of the seasons –
And splashes of colour surprise and delight:
February fog
A magical parchment sky,
A glittering rainbow world.
It’s true though that change is good for the soul,
When one kind of colourful world
Is exchanged – even though briefly – for another.
It’s nice to get away and gain a little perspective –
It helps you appreciate all the good things you already have.
The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched. — Thoreau
The vibrancy of Time Square, NY
For more stories, please visit: Our World.
Golden glow
Sometimes
The sun – just like life -
Burns us not with its heat,
But with its passion,
Its beauty
And its golden glow.
(And yes, it was a very cold sunset!)
For more golden skies, please visit: Skywatch.
Of snow and love
At last – the snow fell as lightly as butterflies
Bringing out the child-like spirits in us all.
It turned the world
Into a snowy poem,
And leaves into fluffy pillows of white.
The magic of the snow is that it
Makes the world a softer place,
A kinder place where dreams can grow.
The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. — Margaret Atwood
For more poems, please visit: Our World.
Who says what?