A Day at the Beach (Mar. 4, 2010)

Early morning, the fishermen are getting started.

Someone on the “Miss Sue”, still asleep,

dreaming of the sail to come.

The waves tumble ashore while the Gulls feed and take their morning bath.

Erosion reveals tortured rocks, speaking of time long passed; the earth slowly moving beyond our sight.

Then the pterodactyls came, reminding me that the dinosaurs

weren’t completely gone.  { Birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than the flying reptiles which were in a different family.}

Small things, shells and rocks, washed by the tide, shaped by time and waves, find their way into my pocket.

 

Feathers, fallen from the sky, find a home in the sand and seaweed.

A book I’m thinking of putting together using my photos.

WHAT I SAW

WHEN I TOOK THE TIME

TO LOOK

T. E. Whittemore

pg. 1

Home.

Not always where you live

Always where you love.

My parents sat on this porch before I was born; my grandparents sat here, and my great grandparents sat here. They brought their children and their friends; they laughed and they loved and they passed it on. When they died their memory and their stories lived on in this view. For a few weeks out of a long hot summer we were blessed; we were home.

pg. 2

Early Sunday morning a great brass bell rang, echoing off the mountain sides, calling the faithful to prayer. A beautiful sound disturbed our repose.

We delayed breakfast that day to wait for those who made the long walk to the little church in the woods to return. Staffed by a lucky visiting minister for only a few months of the summer, its doors remain open when no ones about.

Trust and faith in the wilderness.

pg. 3

Slogging down the muddy “Mosquito Trail”, damp with sweat, hot and tired, trying in vain to fight off the buzzing, blood sucking nuisance. Cursing under our breath at the bugs, the heat and the damp, there appears among the great green ferns, an angel. All dressed in flame she proudly sits beside the trail as if daring us not to stare in admiration.

pg. 4

The trees reach up and tickle the belly of the moon.

She laughs with joy as her children watch her from below, laughing themselves in the joy she brings to the night. All is bathed in silver light, lovers always look better under her gaze.

pg. 5

The last of the “Snow Plants” bake in the heat of a late spring morning.

They speak to the passage of time; first to rise in the cold snows of late winter they remain till spring to remind us of the cold now gone and the warmth yet to come.

pg. 6

Feeling the sand between my toes, picking up odd looking stones, watching the tide come in, being inspected by the local pelican, holding hands with the one I love. These are the things that keep me sane.

pg. 7

Car show, 7/17/2010

There was a time when we made cars.  Real cars. Cars with style.

Cars with curves, fins, and steel. Cars that didn’t say we cared about some cause

or that we were conscious of some environmental problem.  Cars that said that

we were artists, steelworkers, working class folk, proud of our accomplishments

and our country.  While those cars wouldn’t work in todays world, I’m forever thankful

for those days and the beauty and power they produced.  I’m also thankful for those

who preserve and restore them for the rest of us to admire.