Author: Patrick Jennings

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

Barbed Wire & Bullet Holes

Barbed wire and bullet holes
A 20 year old reminder
Of a country broken
And rebuilt
Broken again
And rebuilt

On first glance, you may think the title is about a derelict gas station on some forlorn stretch of lonely desert highway.

You’d be wrong.

It’s about a photographer realising the shot he’ll never have another opportunity to shoot could have been so much better.

Faint hope

Like the sun, shrouded
Seeking the balcony

Like the little Buddha
An outline in the shadows

Some days
No matter how beautiful it seems
From the perspective you’re viewing
Or how comfortable you feel
Right where you’re standing

Ya just gotta stop
Take stock
And realise

You’ve hit a wall

Some cannot see the beauty
In a burned-out forest
So I find it for her

When the light lies low
Yet vibrant

When the dew clings
And the earth seems still

Walls within walls
Doorways within doorways
Once forbidden
Once foreboding

Layers of mystery
Peeled away
By time
Politics
And Money

Three sentinels stand watch
Over the graves of
Cowboys and movie stars
Where the Navajo stand fast

The sun follows
In relentless pursuit
Leaving footprints
In the sky

This is the Story Machine
It loves tragedy
And violence
And Happy Endings

And so its stories tell us
A world all out-of-kilter
At war, and in poverty
Has Happy Endings