Friendship

"Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another,
'What, you too? I thought I was the only one.' "

- C S Lewis

When the muse strikes, rather than being on strike

After a long poetic silence, words are beginning to appear in my head again.



Some new poetry fragments – towards a 2007 sequence…

(1)

The sound of the helicopter blades reminded me that
The first time I had stood on this rocky outcrop I had
Wondered what I was doing next
Then the pieces of the jigsaw all fitted

Because the steam-like mist rose from the valleys below
As if it was time to be going
Growing like an adolescent in the kitchen raiding the fridge
Watching everything like it’s the first time.

(2)


Pictures on the wall were all taken with this new camera
Living in a world where every second can be captured as a
Perfect digital image. Still or moving images

Everything caught as a series of digital code
So that every trace of every life can be saved for future viewing
If only we had the time to review everything

At least then we might learn something from the mistakes of history.


(3)


Be here, be now
Somehow holding on
To everything that we thought was
Precious and spoken


(4)

Tangled spindrift
Winged fragments of encapsulation
Such as bones and carcasses
Pieces becoming new things, new essences
As though the earth were starting all over again
Washed and bleached inside the sea-bed
Where once waited creatures now extinct
Flapped and furrowed, waxed and winnowed
Embraced in water, pictured on the stones
Each one scraped against the soul.

Anglesey

We went to Anglesey for the day and had a fantastic time. I took a heap of photos. One thing I love about digital cameras is the fact that you can get into trial and error much more, and really capture everything that catches the attention. I have put a new header on the blog (the bit at the top of the page). The background is a photo of rocks taken on the same day out.

Spring getting ahead of itself

Spring in full flow:

Burnt from a fire - this doesn't usually happen until much later in the season:




So many shades of green:

Here comes autumn

Standing Stones in Corsica

Here are a couple of pictures taken in Corsica back in July. We visited a site full of standing stones, which was beautiful and filled with a deep presence. It was unusual to see these stones somewhere so hot, rather than in deepest Wales with wind and rain.

Winter Trees

Austrian landscape

... and here is a photo, which is the working image for the cover of the work in progress mentioned in the previous post:

Sunset February

Landscapes

We went for a walk on the common near to where we live. In the middle is a cluster of rocks called Thor's Rock - it is a stunning piece of sandstone. Or at least it was until the local population felt the need to carve their names on every inch of it.

Ewloe Castle - Wales

Ewloe Castle - Wales
Originally uploaded by Stuart Eglin.

I took the boys to Ewloe Castle in Wales this weekend. It's a crumbling remains within woods overlooking a river valley. I was moved to photograph this window, built in the 1200s, look at the stone work in this construction, and look at the harmony of the shape, the window on the universe beyond.

The castle was built by Llywelyn. There are enough remains to make out two circular towers, one of which it is possible to climb up and stand on the top of. There is a ditch which would have been a moat, and a low wall running around the two towers.

I last visited this castle a few years ago. I was impressed this time to find that the whole area of woodland has been turned into a nature reserve.

If you want to see more photos of the castle, and an excellent impression of what the castle would have looked like when it was intact, go to the following website

http://www.castlewales.com/ewloe.html
It's full of photos and details of history.

Just to lift the spirits

This is a photo taken from the chair-lift whilst skiing in Kaprun, Austria back in February. I thought I would post it just to remember the beauty, the grace and the spectacle of the place.

Reflection on a birthday

For my birthday, a photo reflecting on things....

44 today.

from the viewpoint

from the viewpoint

you get a view of the estuary
for a penny in the slot of this telescope

light draws pencils in the landscape
and pokes the sun in the eye

it escapes into another moment of uncertainty
where lines of edges have scolded me

blue light reflects my eyes within a glance
a second's image focused then lost

edges cut through moist thickened air
watching coastline like a novel with no ending

it is a sense where trees in sand look like
something from another time another climate

and being part of changing elements is being
someone else's clothes turning inside out

but then land and sea never could agree
choosing erosion, not combination.

Look at me tree

Re: Flickr magic email
Originally uploaded by Stuart Eglin.

Here is a photo I took a couple of months ago. It was taken in some wild terrain near where I live. It's a tree in mid-winter - and the bark just looks like an eye!

I'm experimenting with Flickr. If it's as easy as it seems to be, there'll be a lot more images on this weblog soon.