The Heaviness of Rain - Grasses In The Wind II

The Heaviness of Rain - Grasses In The Wind II, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

...a loosening and sweetening heaviness,
not sleep, but nearly sleep, not dreaming really
but as ready to believe and still
unfevered, calm and unsurprised

From The Journey by Eavan Boland (1944 - )

Second in a series on the simple pleasures of watching grasses blowing in the wind. ... Grasses In The Wind Series - #2 ... First in series is here

Best Viewed Large On Black - Rainy Day in Otaki Beach [?]

• Available high res and unframed at tomraven.com
• Prints, Cards and Posters available at RavenRedBubble

Enjoy!... Bee Happy!

The Lightness of Being - Grasses In The Wind I

The Lightness of Being - Grasses In The Wind I, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

...nothing while so much is being
felt, his hot lightness of spirit
in being free to walk around
while other are nailed above the earth.
From Bible Study: 71 B.C.E. by Sharon Olds (1942 - )

I have let the grasses in my garden grow again this Spring. My lawns are now a magical meadow of grasses, flowers, bees and birds. Its amazing what joys of nature we miss by mowing our lawns… ツ

So I thought i would post a series on the simple pleasures of watching grasses blowing in the wind. ... Grasses In The Wind Series - #1 ... Second in series is here

Best Viewed Large On Black - The wild meadow of my back garden [?]

All shots are manual focus, high shutter speed shot in RAW with some minor post processing made in Photoshop and/or Picassa. Framing added last, in Photoshop CS3.

• Available high res and unframed at tomraven.com
• Prints, Cards and Posters available at RavenRedBubble

Enjoy!... Bee Happy!

Bee’s Flight to Delight

Bee’s Flight to Delight, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Come, O come, my life’s delight,
Let me not in languor pine!
Love loves no delay; thy sight,
The more enjoyed, the more divine:
O come, and take from me
The pain of being deprived of thee!

Thou all sweetness dost enclose,
Like a little world of bliss.
Beauty guards thy looks: the rose
In them pure and eternal is.
Come, then, and make thy flight
As swift to me, as heavenly light.

My Life’s Delight by Thomas Campion (1567 - 1620)

Best Viewed Large On Black - The universal power of love & attraction :-) [?]

• Available high res and unframed at tomraven.com
• Prints, Cards and Posters available at RavenRedBubble

Soaring in the Magical Sky

Soaring in the Magical Sky, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

From To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Magical Viewed Large On Black

Sunset after the Storm, Otaki Beach, NZ [?]

Reflections of the Yarra River

Reflections of the Yarra River, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

You've been travelling forever for how long god only know?
Long before black man first saw you sixty thousand years ago
And from tribe of 'Yarra Yarra' came your indigenous name
And your name of Yarra river ever with you will remain.

If you could talk Yarra river you'd go down the centuries
Long before the white man's coming when this Land was full of trees
And you'd tell about the white man how he cut the tall gums down
And he sacrificed the forest for to build a concrete town

And you could go back much further way back down the centuries long
On your banks the black tribes gathered for to party and sing song
You have known so many changes as the centuries come and go
But through droughts and long hot summers you have never ceased to flow.

From To The Yarra River by Francis Duggan

Best Viewed Large On Black - Yarra River, Melbourne, Australia [?]

My Fathers Boots

My Fathers Boots, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

I left my fathers boots at the foot of a Buddha in Canberra
I've walked a thousand miles in those old boots, and he many more before me

Half a century I've been walking in my fathers footsteps
A decade and a half since he's been gone, passed on before me

...as it should be

I left my fathers boots in a land he never walked upon
An irony he would enjoy as I move on, into my own later life

After half a century it's time to step into my own footsteps
My son has been walking now for over two decades, beyond me

...as it should be

Tom Raven - 03.02.2009 - Canberra

Best Viewed Large On Black - Buddhist Centre, Narrabundah, Canberra [?]

Kapiti Island: In The Stillness of its Solitude

Kapiti Island: In The Stillness of its Solitude, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

It overlooked in its serenity
The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.
It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror.
~
'Tis the haunt
Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach
The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,
One human step alone, has ever broken
The stillness of its solitude

From The Spirit of Solitude by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Kapiti Island from Otaki Beach, New Zealand [?]

Following The Full Crow Moon

Following The Full Crow Moon, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Crow Moon, tonight you fly
at the balance of the year,
half light, half dark, tipping
your wing toward spring.

Crow Moon, caw away
this winter, gnaw the last
crusts of snow from the
frozen garden. Shine

the earthworms up to
the surface. Worm Moon,
Crow Moon, Full Sap Moon,
wake us up once more.

From Worm Moon, Crow Moon by Sharon Brogan from the blog WaterMark

Best Viewed Large On Black - Full Crow Moon over the Tararuas [?]

In this month the ground softens and the earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of the birds. The more northern tribes knew this as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signals the end of winter, or the Full Crust Moon because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. This is also the Paschal Full Moon; the first full moon of the spring season.

A Budding Flirt Put Forth Its Leaves!

A Budding Flirt Put Forth Its Leaves!, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

And sooth to say, I little doubt
(Some azure day, the truth will out!)
That certain baits in certain eyes
Caught many an unsuspecting prize;
And somewhere underneath these eaves
A budding flirt put forth its leaves!

From Katie by Henry Timrod (1828 - 1867)

Best Viewed Large On Black - View On Black

Bullrushes In The Mist

Bullrushes In The Mist, originally uploaded by TomRaven (On The Road).

Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall,
And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all;
And it mottled the worter with amber and gold
Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled;
And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by
Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky,
Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle
As it cut acrost some orchard to'rds the old swimmin'-hole.

From The Old Swimmin' Hole by James Whitcomb Riley (1849 - 1916)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra, Australia [?]

Victoria - After The Fire

Victoria - After The Fire, originally uploaded by TomRaven (On The Road).

Fall after the bush fire
The trembling of the earth.
Memories etch
The stalled step, and
The mute moment
Death turned out during a night of yearning
Except for him the consolation.

From Suburban Memories by Nguyễn Đạt

Six months on from Black Saturday the worst bush fires in Victoria's history, the green shoots of growth are returning. I met a couple out in the Bush walking their dogs... they had lost their house and their neighbours and were busy rebuilding. "It's a natural cycle, mate!" he said "burns from the top so it can regrow from the bottom". This is a tribute to all Victorians who suffered in the fires and continue to come to grips with the changes it brought to their lives.

Best Viewed Large On Black - Clonbinane, Victoria, Australia [?]

Homage to an Age of Industry

Homage to an Age of Industry, originally uploaded by TomRaven (On The Road).

The artifacts of the Age of Industry are solid things
Big things; of metal, concrete and stone

What of the Information Age?
What will we leave behind for future generations?

The artifacts of the Age of Information are ephemeral things
Little things; of bits and bytes and nanotech

Will they last the test of time?
Will Cyberspace outlast the Engineering of our past?

Tom Raven - 04.08.2009 - Sydney

Sculpture: Australian Angel - Bernard Luginbuhl, Switzerland (1929 -)
Background: The Sydney Harbour Bridge

Best Viewed Large On Black - Milsons Point, Sydney, Australia [?]

In The Land of Oz Series - Bronze

Farewell Aotearoa: On a Wing and a Prayer

Farewell Aotearoa: On a Wing and a Prayer, originally uploaded by TomRaven (On The Road).

In a far country, and a distant age,
Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth,
A boy was born of humble parentage;
The stars that shone upon his lonely birth
Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame—
Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
~
For oft, when he believed himself alone,
They caught brief snatches of mysterious rhymes,
Which he would murmur in an undertone,
Like a pleased bee’s in summer; and at times
A strange far look would come into his eyes,
As if he saw a vision in the skies.

Two excerpts from A Vision of Poesy by Henry Timrod (1828 - 1867)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Kapiti Island from the Air [?]

The Clarity of Crystal Light

The Clarity of Crystal Light, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Then look, who list thy gazeful eyes to feed
With sight of that is fair, look on the frame
Of this wide universe, and therein reed
The endless kinds of creatures which by name
Thou canst not count, much less their natures aim;
All which are made with wondrous wise respect,
And all with admirable beauty deckt.

First th' earth, on adamantine pillars founded,
Amid the sea engirt with brazen bands;
Then th' air still flitting, but yet firmly bounded
On every side, with piles of flaming brands,
Never consum'd, nor quench'd with mortal hands;
And last, that mighty shining crystal wall,
Wherewith he hath encompassed this All.

From An Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty by Edmund Spenser (1552 - 1599)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Hanging Rosemary & Quartz Crystal [?]

The Limitless Sky

The Limitless Sky, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Eventually, sometime around the middle of your life,
There’s a moment when the first imagination begins to wane.
The future that had always seemed so limitless dissolves,
And the dreams that used to seem so real float up and fade.
The years accumulate; but they start to take on a mild,
Human tone beyond imagination, like the sound the heart makes
Pouring into the past its hymns of adoration and regret.
And then gradually the moments quicken into life,
Vibrant with possibility, sovereign, dense, serene;
And then the park is empty and the years are still.

I think the saddest memory is of a kind of light,
A kind of twilight, that seemed to permeate the air
For a few years after I’d grown up and gone away from home.
It was limitless and free. And of course I was going to change,
But freedom means that only aspects ever really change,
And that as the past recedes and the future floats away
You turn into what you are. And so I stayed basically the same
As what I’d always been, while the blond light in the trees
Became part of my memory, and my voice took on the accents
Of a mind infatuated with the rhetoric of farewell.

From In the Park by John Koethe (1945 - )

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

In The Stillness Of The Light

In The Stillness Of The Light, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Even now, the dream moving towards light, the field of light flowing gently towards me,
I watch myself dreaming, I watch myself dreaming and watching, I watch both watchers together.
~
My vigilance never flags, though; I behold the infernal beholder, I behold the uncanny beheld,
this mind streaming through me, its turbulent stillness, its murmur, inexorable, beguiling.

From Light by C. K. Williams (1936 - )

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Black Swans At Dusk

Black Swans At Dusk, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists … but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge.
One single observation or experience can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans (p xvii).

From The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007

Black on flat water past the jonquil lawns
Riding, the black swan draws
A private chaos warbling in its wake,
Assuming, like a fourth dimension, splendor
That calls the child with white ideas of swans
Nearer to that green lake
Where every paradox means wonder.

Though the black swan’s arched neck is like
A question-mark on the lake,
The swan outlaws all possible questioning:
A thing in itself, like love, like submarine
Disaster, or the first sound when we wake;
And the swan-song it sings
Is the huge silence of the swan.

From The Black Swan by James Merrill (1926 - 1995)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Nature Is A Mirror Of The Soul

Nature Is A Mirror Of The Soul, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

A crisp clear and very still evening, this evening. The water of the Waitohu stream as it reaches the sea where a still and perfect mirror... a mirror of the soul!

That there is another, mirror world, a world of light, and that this world is simply the sky—and a step further, the breath of the sky, the weather, the very air—is a formative belief of great antiquity that has continued to the present day with the godhead becoming brightness itself: dios/theos (Greek); deus/divine/diana (Latin); devas (Sanskrit); daha (Arabic); day (English).

From the book Wolves and Honey by Susan Brind Morrow (2009)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Reflections in the Silent Stream

Reflections in the Silent Stream, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare,
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Some Motionless Conflict in the Sky

Some Motionless Conflict in the Sky, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Some motionless conflict in the sky
As of Milton’s angels painted there
In all their radiance and red malice

It is a special happiness and universal
Simply to know the names of colors
And to see them said

She mixed the colors for house painters
That was Binghamton Rochester Indianapolis
I’ll take less luck if it means less stink she said

A special happiness
When clouds contest with clouds
In fixed flamboyance

Good versus Evil or beautiful cold hair
God loosed angels on us and they are the air

“Some motionless conflict in the sky...” by Donald Revell (1954 - )

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Watching The Golden Glow

Watching The Golden Glow, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

The lordly and isolate Satyrs—look at them come in
on the left side of the beach
like a motorcycle club! And the handsomest of them,
the one who has a woman, driving that snazzy
convertible
Wow, did you ever see even in a museum
such a collection of boddisatvahs, the way
they come up to their stop, each of them
as though it was a rudder
the way they have to sit above it
and come to a stop on it, the monumental solidity
of themselves, the Easter Island
they make of the beach, the Red-headed Men

These are the Androgynes,
the Fathers behind the father, the Great Halves

From The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs by Charles Olson (1910 - 1970)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Wading in the Rays

Wading in the Rays, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Otaki Beach, Winter Solstice June 2009 [?]

Crocodile Island Blues

Crocodile Island Blues, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Kapiti Island is such a magical, mystical place!

Taken from Pukerua Bay, Kapiti Coast, Wellington, New Zealand and featuring Kapiti Island Nature Reserve, the Kapiti Marine Sanctuary, Sun, Sea, Clouds and Sky.

“Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill.”
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?
I wish that I might be a thinking stone.
The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was. And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.

From Le Monocle de Mon Oncle by Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Pukerua Bay, New Zealand [?]

A New Logo For A New Year

Winter Solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere and time to start a new year with a new image. A Raven Image!

A new logo and a new icon for this post and for my Flickr account, signifying a new start and a renewed focus on bringing you the best images I can take and make, for your viewing pleasure :-)

Sunset of the Longest Night

Sunset of the Longest Night, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Winter solstice today and a bright crisp day it was. Here is the sunset on the eve of the longest night. Tomorrow is the shortest day and it's all up hill from now on :-) It will be fun to watch the sun reverse it's norhbound movement and head back southward and set later each ady... soon I will be able to catch the sunset after work again instead of getting home in the dark.

The white dove of winter
sheds its first
fine feathers;
they melt

as they touch
the warm ground
like notes
of a once familiar

music; the earth
shivers and
turns towards
the solstice.

From The Months by Linda Pastan (Poetry magazine 1999)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Mystical Mountain Beyond The Sea

Mystical Mountain Beyond The Sea, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Like a mysterious mystical island in the reddish pink sunset, Mt Ruapehu appears to float on the horizon with a deep blue cloud above it. The beach can be so stunning at this time of year and the vistas so distant and beautiful.

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

From Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Frosty Morning Reflections

Frosty Morning Reflections, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Very frosty morning, this morning. Stopped and caught this sunrise shot on the way to work... brrrr... it was cold!!!

From low to high doth dissolution climb,
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;
A musical but melancholy chime,
Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,
Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care.
Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
That in the morning whitened hill and plain
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time.

Mutability by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Best Viewed Large On Black - Pauatahanui Inlet at Sunrise, Wellington [?]

Dawn Volcano: Early Light Over Kapiti

Dawn Volcano: Early Light Over Kapiti, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Taken from my favorite roadside stop on my way to work! Looking out over the Kapiti Coast and beyond to Mt Ruapehu at dawn.
This is such a stunning landscape and I feel so blessed to pass this way every day on my way to work... not many commutes have this kind of majesty to be soaked up :-)

In the Empire of Light
the water’s completely dry

floating on a surface of itself
around islands pointed south-southwest

The wind fills it then
with more of itself

according to the rules
which cause parallel lines

to vibrate and cross
less and less

From In the Empire of Light by Michael Palmer (1943 - )

Best Viewed Large On Black - Paekakariki Hill, Wellington, NewZealand [?]

In The Wind: A Stormy Sky

In The Wind: A Stormy Sky, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

A stormy winter sky tonight. Blowing a gale and rain on the way. Weather is really changeable at the moment with sunny crisp days and 12C nights and Norwesters followed by arctic blasts from the south with snow and sleet and hard frosts. Welcome to NZ in Winter and I'm in the mild North Island not the frozen South :-)

know nothing, are nothing, save a fume
driving across a mind
preoccupied with this: our doom
is, to be sifted by the wind,

heaped up, smoothed down like silly sands.
We are less permanent than thought.

From Villon by Basil Bunting (1900 - 1985)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Mystical: A Tangerine Dream

Mystical: A Tangerine Dream, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Indeed this is a tangerine dream. The volcano, Mt Ruapehu, can be seen on the horizon, snow capped and mystical floating above the blue sea in the tangerine sky! Ruapehu is over 200km away and over 100km inland but some days can be seen like a mystical floating island across the sea from Otaki Beach!

Or fragments of the day's intense serene;
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.

From Epipsychidion by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Morning Glory: Beyond the Fence

Morning Glory: Beyond the Fence, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

The glorious light of morning at dawn on a cold winters day in paradise.
I stop at this place most mornings on my way to work and at the moment this is coinciding with dawn so a great photo opportunity on a nice day. This is another HDR, a little more gaudy this time but a pretty true reflection of what the sunrise looked like on this cold and frosty morning. The viewpoint looks out over the Kapiti Coast with Kapiti Island to the left and the Tararua Ranges to the right. Between mountains and sea on a narrow strip of land lie Paekakariki below and Paraparaumu in the distance and the single road and rail links into the capital, Wellington.

That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

To behold the day-break!
The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
The air tastes good to my palate.

Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding,
Scooting obliquely high and low.

Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.

The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,
The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head,
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!

From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Serenity: The Sun Retreats Beyond The Horizon

Serenity: The Sun Retreats Beyond The Horizon, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

I've been playing with HDR lately. Avoided it for sometime as a lot f HDRs I have seen are just gaudy and unreal and I prefer to try and capture things exactly or as close as possible to the way they actually look.This shot is an HDR created rom two frames with a one stop difference in exposure! Unlike the previous post (also an HDR) I think this one actually captures the reality much closer than a non HDR. I'm aiming to find a subtle HDR effect that helps me capture the beauty and splendor of the sunrises and sunsets here without becoming to unreal or 'trippy' like some of the psychedelic HDR shots I have seen

Here end the works of the sea, the works of love.

Those who will some day live here where we end —
should the blood happen to darken in their memory and overflow —
let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels,
let them turn the heads of the victims towards Erebus:

We who had nothing will school them in serenity.

From Mythistorema by George Seferis (1900-1971)
- original name Giorgios Stylianou Seferiades

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Bliss: Dawn’s Early Light

Bliss: Dawn’s Early Light, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Thicker crowd the shades while the grave East deepens
Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.
Maiden still the morn is; and strange she is, and secret;
Strange her eyes; her cheeks are cold as cold sea-shells.

Sunrays, leaning on our southern hills and lighting
Wild cloud-mountains that drag the hills along,

From Love in the Valley by George Meredith (1828 - 1909)

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Deep Peace The Beach At Dusk

Deep Peace The Beach At Dusk, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

Dusk. The Flight passing Blanchisseuse.
Gulls wheel like. from a gun again,
and foam gone amber that was white,
lighthouse and star start making friends,
down every beach the long day ends,
and there, on that last stretch of sand,
on a beach bare of all but light,
dark hands start pulling in the seine
of the dark sea, deep, deep inland.

From The Schooner Flight by Derek Walcott (1930 - )

Best Viewed Large On Black - See where this picture was taken. [?]

Bottlebrush Bokeh

Bottlebrush Bokeh, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

As though the same blooms had come back, white freaked with red
And heavily scented. Or a cut branch of pear blooms before its time,
“Forced.” Time brings us into bloom and we wait, busy, but wait
For the unforced flow of words and intercourse and sleep and dreams
In which the past seems to portend a future which is just more
Daily life. The cat has a ripped ear. He fights, he fights all
The tom cats all the time. There are blood gouts on a velvet seat.
Easily sponged off: but these red drops on a book of Stifter’s, will
I remember and say at some future time, “Oh, yes, that was the day
Hodge had a torn ear and bled on the card table?” Poor
Hodge, battered like an old car. Silence flows into my mind. It
Is spring. It is also still really winter. Not a day when you say,
“What a beautiful spring day.” A day like twilight or evening when
You think, “I meant to watch the sun set.” And then comes on
To rain. “You’ve got to take,” says the man at the store, “the rough
With the smooth.” A window to the south is rough with raindrops
That, caught in the screen, spell out untranslatable glyphs.

From Hymn to Life by James Schuyler (1923 - 1991)

Best Viewed Large On Black

Dancing The Light Fantastic

Dancing The Light Fantastic, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

This country has such a glorious quality of light! I feel so blessed to live here so close to the wild west coast and the beach. Wandering on the beach every evening with my camera is a ritual I will never tire of. This time of year more than any, I think, is so beautiful! It may be cold on the beach, especially in a brisk westerly wind, but it is truly empty and the light, oh the light.
The Dancing Gull is a signature character in many of my shots and there is a whole story around how he came to be and around the group I co founded on Flickr - Fat Bee & Dancing Gull - so it's nice to catch him dancing at the beach in these glorious winter sunsets.

Come, and trip it as ye go

On the light fantastic toe,

And in thy right hand lead with thee,

The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;

And if I give thee honour due,

Mirth, admit me of thy crew

To live with her, and live with thee,

In unreproved pleasures free;

To hear the lark begin his flight,

And singing startle the dull night,

From his watch-tower in the skies,

Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

Then to come in spite of sorrow,

And at my window bid good-morrow,

Through the sweet-briar, or the vine,

Or the twisted eglantine;

While the cock with lively din,

Scatters the rear of darkness thin,

And to the stack, or the barn door,

Stoutly struts his dames before;

Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn

Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn,

From the side of some hoar hill,

Through the high wood echoing shrill.

From L'Allegro by John Milton (1608 - 1674)

Sunrise of the Moon of the Long Nights

Sunrise of the Moon of the Long Nights, originally uploaded by TomRaven.

The first blog at sunrise on 8th June 2009 with a photo taken high on Paekakariki Hill overlooking Pukerua Bay and the Full Moon setting in the rising sun> Sweet! The perfect way to start a new enterprise... my first daily blog :-)

Thought I would add to my daily Flickr posts with general ramblings and notes about the day. It was a crisp and very cold winter morning. Scrapping the ice off the car windscreen for the first time this year.
Back to work after a well deserved week off ... the first break in almost a year! Got lots of great photos taken over the last week and had a lazy relaxing time in a crisp sunny New Zealand winter.

The Full Long Nights Moon sets at Sunrise over Pukerua Bay, New Zealand June 8th 2009

Night knows not, neither is it shown to day,
By sunlight nor by starlight is it shown,
Nor to the full moon's eye nor footfall known,
Their world's untrodden and unkindled way.
Nor is the breath nor music of it blown
With sounds of winter or with winds of May.

But here, where light and darkness reconciled
Held earth between them as a weanling child
Between the balanced hands of death and birth,
Even as they held the new-born shape of earth
When first life trembled in her limbs and smiled,
Here hope might think to find what hope were worth.

from In the Bay by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 - 1909)