Tag Archives: photography

DREAMING OF LANZAROTE

Six grey ponies tearing at frost-rimed grass on the drive in.
Nephin sporting a capÍn of snow.
Swans, paired, trawling the lake’s inlets.
At the doctor’s office Martina still has her coat and scarf on
Furiously fielding phone calls and mumbled inquiries
From the queue shuffling through the dismal hallway.
In the waiting room two old fellas gab away, biding their time,
In it for the long haul.
And then two more.
Their Mayo dialect—laced with curses—
Rolls around their mouths as if they’re sucking boiled sweets.
It seems, to my untuned ear, to be a diatribe
Of every family in the county,
Or maybe just a friendly reminiscing.
Soon, all the chairs are taken
And still the patients stream in:
Bloodless, Vitamin D starved faces, rattling coughs, mini-germ factories,
Dreaming of Lanzarote.

SUNDAY OUTING IN THE WEST OF IRELAND

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They come, pilgrims of another sort,
Croagh Patrick, a hulking monolith shrouded in mist at their backs,
Bent into the gusting wind and salty squalls driving in off the Atlantic,
To gawk at the storm ravaged beach.
The car park and road obliterated by huddles of sea-rounded rocks—
Grey, cream, purple—
Tossed merrily over the breakwaters by a tidal surge
The like not seen in a quarter century.
The dunes too, took an awful beating.
Clumps of Marram grass strewn across the beach
Like strange seabird nests woven through with blue and green fishermen’s string.
These Sunday trippers come in droves
Despite the rain and wind and devastation,
Their bellies full of roast and pudding
And maybe a pint or two,
Their dogs and children scampering wet circles into the sand,
Eager for a bit of mid-winter drama.

Bertra Strand, Co. Mayo, Ireland, January 2014

SNOW–LOVE IT OR HATE IT?

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It’s that time of year again; my halls are decked with dripping snow boots, pants, hats, and mittens. We’ve been frolicking in the fluffy stuff, building forts, packing snowballs, snapping snow scenes for holiday cards.

First out the door on a snow day is Dahlia, our resident snow cat. Ever since she was a kitten she’s loved the snow. Her mother, on the other hand, is happy to sit on the doorstep, soaking up the rays, but not setting paw anywhere near that disgusting cold, wet, white stuff.

Love it or hate it, we all fall somewhere on the snow spectrum. As a child I was way over to the left, under radically obsessed. The fact that we rarely ever got more than a mushy millimeter of snow in Ireland may have had something to do with it. Even a good frost classified as a “snowy” day. And then one year we got the mother of all snowfalls. It snowed for twenty-four hours straight, and by the end of it, the country was in total lock down, which lasted for weeks. I remember walking along snow banks with the tops of hedges poking out, and coming across cars buried in snow caves at the side of the road. My toddler brother owes his continued existence to his red snow suit. But for that, we’d have lost him, sunk up to his little uxters in a snowdrift. Needless to say, I was in heaven.

Now, living in the Northeast US, we get at least one good footer of a storm a year, and sometimes more. When the local forecasters go into hyperbolic mode about the massive storm barreling our way, I still feel that tingle of excitement. And even if I don’t always want to run out and make snow angels, I delight in the transformed landscape, and drink in the sharp tang of snowy air.

I believe I inherited my love of snow from my father. He never failed to get excited about a flake of snow, and often, when I call him up and tell him of our latest snowfall, he’ll express deep envy. My mother—not so much. She falls on the other end of the spectrum. Happy to look at a pristine landscape through a window, while snuggled up with a good book and a cup of tea, don’t ask her to step outside.

Where do you fall on the snow spectrum? Love it, hate it, or somewhere in between?

November Morning

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Quiet world.
Feathers of frost on glass.
The clack of buttons and zippers in the tumble dryer,
Cat snoring stolidly,
Radiators ticking, keeping the cold at bay.
The lone cricket whose slow trill I pinpointed in the spirea
Has gone silent.
And all those boisterous crows and blue jays
Conducting their business in full-throat yesterday,
Have been subdued.
The ‘possums entrails, spilling in pink coils out of its belly onto the road
Have frozen—frozen dinners for turkey vultures.
Low burnt-sienna sunlight through closed lids and closed window
Is still warm enough to bask in.

Golden Moments

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Yesterday was one of those crisp September mornings you could bite into like a perfectly ripe Macintosh apple. My youngest son, having started first grade the day before, was off for the Jewish New Year holiday. It was too good an opportunity to miss. We grabbed our cameras and headed out to our local stretch of the Appalachian Trail.

Our first leg of the trail runs alongside a dry summer meadow filled with purple aster and golden rod. My son marveled at the insect orchestra. I pointed out the different pitches and rhythms of the grasshoppers and crickets. We watched goldfinches flitting from seed head to seed head, stuffing their beaks. Trios of cabbage white butterflies danced around a mud puddle. A monarch flapped and drifted, seeking out the last flowering heads of milkweed. The air was sweet with the scent of virgin’s bower, the native wild clematis.

When we reached the woodland, the dirt path was packed, dry clay. But pushing up through the leaf mold, we spied several species of toadstool. When I told Milo about the extensive mycelium network that spreads underground from a mushroom colony, his imagination ran riot. He began inventing Rube Goldberg machines powered by mushrooms that sent secret messages down these connecting tubes.

We reached the boardwalk over the marshes and marveled at the variety of late summer flowers—turtleheads, purple loosestrife, jewelweed, bursting pods of milkweed fluff. At the suspension bridge we gazed down into the slow moving depths of the Pochuck Creek, looking for small trout. I think the herons had got there before us, but we did find an owl pellet stuffed with hair and delicate mouse bones.

At Turtle Bridge we counted nineteen Eastern Painted Turtles, and a water snake.

As we walked back through the woods, it dawned on me that at exactly this spot, six years ago, it had finally sunk in that I was going to have a baby—my youngest son. At 41, with two almost teens, the thought of another baby had been far from my mind. And yet, here he is, six years later, my late summer golden moment. What a gift.

Melissa Shaw-Smith

Writer