a collection of ramblings
I am thinking
about the lost things.
About the shadows
interspersing
the dappled light.
About overgrown temples
and shattered statues
and stolen jewels.
About the depths
of where we came from.
About the heights
of where we might go.
so maybe the only thing
separating loving and living
is an oh of amazement – the
breathless sound the sky makes
when falling the final gradient
from dusk to twilight and back
again, the way your eyes keep
searching for stars only an
evenmist away, how your fingertips
keep feeling for worlds closeted
within atoms, and maybe
that difference really isn’t as
much as we always thought,
like how your breath can be a
song and a song can be a kiss
from the universe saying you are
here you are here you are here
over and over in seven quintillion
different ways.
This is a chestnut-headed bee-eater I spotted flying over a field in Valparai earlier this summer. I’ve always loved bee-eaters – almost as much as I love kingfishers, actually. The first time I saw one – a blue-throated bee-eater in my condo – I actually could not stop smiling for a solid half-hour afterwards. There’s a sort of exuberance they inspire, the way they swoop and dance over the sky, their quick rests on the bare branches, their confident grace. They’re also pretty damned beautiful, no matter which way you cut it, and the sight of their bright colors darting across the blue is enough to make anyone convert.
On some weeks I’m going to be reposting old photographs and posts. This one is from nearly a year ago, and I thought deserved a fresh glance.
A fire smoulders on a dark night in Bangalore, India.
we burn with unapologetic fury
against the dark, the dark,
the creeping creeping dark;
sing with unrestrained vigor
into the silence, the silence
the humming humming silence;
live with undimmed spark
for the light, the light
it grows and it grows and
it grows
against this sky’s endless canvas,
paint your image with your wings:
call it a self-portrait in ultraviolet.
I’ve been experimenting a bit with photo-editing lately. This, of a blue-throated bee-eater from a trip to Sungei Buloh quite a few months back, is one of the results. I’m not sure what I make of it – let me know what you guys think.
Note: this post is scheduled.
insufferable delicacy
infused into the bend
of knee, turn of head:
a water-borne ballet,
beat kept by still water,
reflecting this moment
then, now, forevermore.
This will – finally – be the last of the birds from my trip to the Llobregat Delta in Spain, almost eight months on. (What can I say. I procrastinate.) And it’s the bird I treasured most from my trip there – one that, to me, embodies everything there is to love about shorebirds: the black-winged stilt. When I saw it, just below the hide, I may have squealed a little.
Part of it is the number of times the name has casually been dropped when reading birding blogs, and till Llobregat, I have had to contend with the knowledge that I have never seen it; another part of it is – well, it. Come on. There is nothing to hate about such a paragon of utter loveliness. Observe its thin, pencil-like beak, beautiful in its ergonomicity; the perfect roundness of its head; the ridiculously and delightfully disproportionate legs that offer its name to us very easily. (Unlike *cough cough* some birds.)
Sometimes I wonder how such birds can exist without the world imploding twice-over.
and so the light rises,
over bone-still hills;
a river fills vast silences
with the thin whistling
of time and time again,
the susurrating trees
becoming their own
somnolent witnesses.
About a month and a half ago, because I suck at updating, we went for a hike in the Himalayas.
It was – amazing, as one might expect. The mountains, the trees, the rivers, the sky, the everything. It’s so quiet there – just the sound of the water and the wind. For miles and miles there is not a single living soul. Just you, and your breathing.
This is an introductory photograph, if anything. I played with it quite a bit in Photoshop – just to see where I could take it.
More stories, poems, and photographs will be forthcoming over the next few months. 🙂
