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 - )

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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)

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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)

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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)

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