Poetry by Patrick Jennings

Ascension

You, dear one
On your own stormy passage
Astride God’s wing
These waning days
Rising through your fall
Into His grace

Slowed in wit and voice
Ever keener of spirit
You ascend

Passing through
Deep featureless slumbers
Parting clouds offer
Fleeting glimpses of the love
Gathered ’round you

Then
With swift finality
Through the cloud
Into heaven’s azure
There to witness
God’s full blaze
And in His embrace
The lesser stars
Of those who’d passed
This way before

And there too
The One True Love
You’d lost so long ago
Now with God
He welcomes your return
To Love’s eternity

Landscape by Patrick Jennings
Read More
Shadow Selfie, U.S. Highway 50, Lincoln Highway, Loneliest Road in America, East of Eureka, Nevada, USA

Shadow Selfie

I have to admit there are an overabundance of road pics in my catalogue, photographs in which various streets, highways, byways and gravel tracks from my travels serve as the primary subject of a landscape. Mind you, I’m not apologizing for that.  We photograph and write about what we know and love, and I love few things more than being behind the wheel of a car (or pedaling a bicycle) through unknown country. Over 40+ years of driving and cycling I’ve amassed several hundreds of thousands of miles wheeling on just about every road surface imaginable.

Safe to say, I know roads.

Continue reading Shadow Selfie
Poetry by Patrick Jennings
Read More
Rain Abated, Cannon Beach, Oregon, United States of America

Stormy Solitude

Rain abated
Dimpled sand dries in Rorschach patches
Sky a mottled grey
A single darkened cloud
Mimics patterns in the sand

Some might wish for the sun
To feel the heat on their skin
Or rising from the scalding sand
Secure in the haven of a beach towel
Beneath an umbrella in a sea of beachgoers

But I prefer this solitude
Shared only with the rumbling surf
And the gull idling by
On the penetrating wind
Which tousles my knotting hair

Draw my windbreaker tight against the insistent chill
Rub some warmth into my thighs through the denim
All the while  engaging the impression
That I have this spectacular planet
All to myself

Continue reading Stormy Solitude
Poetry by Patrick Jennings
Read More
Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon, United States of America

Surf Song

With gentle insistence
The ocean rises up to greet me
And I, pant legs rolled to my calves
Welcome it’s cool, frothy embrace
Enjoy the caress of water over my ankles
The sensation of sinking into the sand
As the receding wave draws the beach
From beneath my feet

I stay there for an hour or so
Take a few steps back
When the waves threaten my trousers
A few steps forward
When they fail to reach me
My sandpiper dance
In time with the surf song
And its choir of gulls

Continue reading Surf Song