Solitary sentinel
Faces menacing skies
Steadfast
Resolute
Safe harbour signal
Sought in distress
Solitary sentinel
Faces menacing skies
Steadfast
Resolute
Safe harbour signal
Sought in distress
She reclines on the porch swing
Sways with gentle breezes
She loves this spot
Overlooking the bay
Always the picture of calm
Even if the sky threatens rain
Artful reflections
Flow over glassy waters
The ominous clouds tempered
As the wash of a watercolour
On which her mind paints
Stories of transformation
In the morning
A mug of americano
Vapour wafting
With the scent of roasted bean
Then the garden
No more than a thin film
Of rock-strewn topsoil
Spread over a bed of granite
Now the afternoon
Pinot gris
The bottle at her feet
Chills in a bucket of ice
This afternoon
Began earlier than others
Though not the earliest retreat
She may not need
To replenish the bottle
Some thought her broken
Even brittle
But all the brittle
Had broken away
In countless storms
What remained
Was hardened
Tenacious
She’d shed many facades
Until what was left
Was what she chose
To keep
She kept nothing
For perfunctory friendships
Or pettiness
Able to withstand any hardship
She chose carefully
What to stand for
And who
Content in gentleness
She suffered no one
Who drove hard upon her shores
If some thought
Walking away made her weak
She walked away
While they washed out to sea
In the off season
Lobster traps wait in repose
Fishers count the days
Stillness in dark, dense forest
Light trickles through the canopy
Enough to cast shadows of utter black
In near blackness
Trees and roots form vague outlines
A maze of a path
Upon a maze for footfalls
I stumble my way
In a direction which seems
Forward
Progress slow
Or futile
I do not know
No matter
If futile
Step back
Seek another path
In this sense
All paths lead to the light
Failure is to remain complacent
In the darkness
Share the infinite
At your side astride the void
Love fills the vastness
I remind myself
A photograph is neither
A moment nor a place
Taking a photograph is neither
In the moment, nor the place
So I put down the camera
Take one breath
Then another
In the moment, and the place
Aground not grounded
Becoming one with the Earth
Ashes to Ashes