Author: Patrick Jennings

I travel, when I can. Write, when inspired. Photograph, where there's beauty. Make films, for a living. Oh, and I play a decent didjiridu.

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJul 18, 20152:00 pm

Point Reyes Centering

To find the center
Of all that is
All that was
All that will be

I like the ocean best

A high overlook
With a hard onshore wind
Driving the breakers
Far onto shore

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJul 18, 20158:00 am

Yellow Sky at Night

The sun goes down while
The colour goes up
And it’s a beauty
A flood of neon yellow

How does the physics do that?

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJul 17, 20157:00 am

Red tide of fire

Red tide of fire
Flash floods every morning
With the sun’s first rays

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJul 16, 20158:53 pm

Tnorala Dreaming

In the time of world-dawn
When the ancestors dreamed
The world into being, raised
colour from the grey, formed
being from nullity
The women danced as stars
In the heavens

Poetry by Patrick JenningsJul 15, 20158:46 pm

The flood

They come trickling in
By ones
By twos
By threes
By fives

For him
Like a rising tide
They come
In ripples

Landscape by Patrick JenningsJul 15, 20157:00 am

In the ebony hills, an ivory city.

This is no tourist destination. It is a small, busy, virile town of subtle charm like so many other small, busy, virile towns. You will never discover the charms if you arrive on the train and depart on the next bus.

Olympus OM-2 by Patrick JenningsJul 14, 20157:00 am

Dragon Brazier, Kong Miao, Confucius Temple, Beijing, China

The Dragon is China

“The Dragon is China,” she told me.

I nodded an assent, then shook my head… paused. “What does that mean?”

She told me. I must still not have understood, because I’ve forgotten. Only the phrase is left. I couldn’t focus, and the image in my mind drifted away.

Like this photo of a dragon-handled brazier at Kong Miao, the Confucius Temple in Beijing. Ever so slightly, focussed too deep. And like a photograph, there is no way, hard as I’ve tried, to bring China fully into focus.

Olympus OM-2 by Patrick JenningsJul 13, 20157:00 am

Remember Me

In the dusky hour, the shops and stalls closed up for the night. The day’s crowds still dwindling as I wander the streets.

I am in Kashgar’s thrall. Its people, its buildings, its colours, its smells. Its efficient simplicity, driven by foot and hoof on these back alleys and lanes. The smiles; the furrowed brows; the twinkling eyes, the hard glares: of shopkeepers and shoppers.