I was walking the dogs along a nearby stream the other day and took a few photos:
The day was warm and the stream was actually unfrozen and moving for the first time in weeks. There was the smell of earth again. It was alive! There are several ancient trees that loom above the stream, their roots clinging to bank like gnarled toes.
I love the hairiness of this root sculpture:
And roots always make me think of my favorite poet, Theodore Roethke, who wrote, among many other things, a series of poems about what he observed when he was a little boy, in the greenhouse belonging to his father. They had a nursery business in Michigan and Roethke wrote about the things he absorbed in the hothouse during what must have been long dark winters. He wrote about about plants and roots and grubs in the most beautiful and often erotically charged words. Well, why go on. Please enjoy:
FORCING HOUSE
By Theodore Roethke
Vines tougher than wrists
And rubbery shoots,
Scums, mildews, smuts along stems,
Great cannas or delicate cyclamen tips, –
All pulse with the knocking pipes
That drip and sweat,
Sweat and drip,
Swelling the roots with steam and stench,
Shooting up lime and dung and ground bones, –
Fifty summers in motion at once,
As the live heat billows from pipes and pots.
ORCHIDS
By Theodore Roethke
They lean over the path,
Adder-mouthed,
Swaying close to the face,
Coming out, soft and deceptive,
Limp and damp, delicate as a young bird’s tongue;
Their fluttery fledgling lips
Move slowly,
Drawing in the warm air.
And at night,
The faint moon falling through whitewashed glass,
The heat going down
So their musty smell comes even stronger,
Drifting down from their mossy cradles:
So many devouring infants!
Soft luminescent fingers,
Lips neither dead nor alive,
Loose ghostly mouths
Breathing.
I love these photos.Tree root systems are incredible. They are so old but also so delicate. If the elements of life aren’t there, it simply dies.They really aren’t too different than human beings. My favorite photo is the last one- the almost night sky.Lovely.
Well
It is a damp, rainy, cold, humid day in Northern California…and a full moon and something about a high tide… and I do not know what else to put on, besides the three layers of clothing, a jacket, a hat with a pompom on the top that makes me look weird… but keeps my head warm… (some say cute as it is much kinder)… and swear there are ‘rivers’ on the roads. Like rivers!!! coming from? must be that high tide thing!.
This computer lab is kept cold…. we take computers apart and some get worked on… some are taken into parts that are useable… as I am working on this certification called A+… for something to do, while I decide what to do next. And learning all sorts of things from the inside of the machines… all sorts of things and making movies of the inside of those machines….of things that are most interesting to me right now, but will be history pretty soon. This place reminds me of that NASA assignment I did in the wind tunnel (swear), as it felt just as cold and just as weird. The folks taking this class are very bright and young young young..and I have a good time listening to their thinking process. But they pick up concepts with the same flare that Holly wears her hoody or her red jacket. That is how smart they are. And enjoyed seeing President Obama meeting with the Facebook kid, the Oracle giant, the Magician Steven Jobs for dinner last night. It is an amazing mix of events. And that is only in one part of the world. Stay warm and stay dry and if I ever finish my little video of goings on inside computers, I will hang it on YouTube….
Lupe, that sounds like an interesting bit of education you’ve taken on. Will you be able to repair computers when you’re certified?
Take care,
Annie
Yes Annie…. like putting computer systems together from parts and fix the ones who do not work or develop problems, replace mother boards, or power supplies, up the RAM or change or upgrade components such as graphic cards…. and or servers. It is lotsa fun to see how things work inside and how darn smart we humans are!!!…
Well now,Lupe, I’m some impressed! I’ll just expect you to fly right across the country next time my computer goes belly up and needs a repair. : )
I’m interested in how things work too, but wouldn’t have the ambition to take on such a task.
Have fun with it,it can be a lucrative business.
Annie:
This is how the inside of a computer ‘sounds’ like to me..
Marcha Radetzky – Concierto Año Nuevo 2011 — Franz Welser-Möst
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWXctNObfQU
Kind of every piece doing it’s thing and it is magic..
(So I have some imagination…)
Ann, lovely pics and poems today! Gives some hope for the arrival of spring, doesn’t it?
Enjoy the day,
Annie
I love the way repeating – but *reversing* the order of – “drip” and “sweat” in Forcing House impacts the sensory experience of the poem.
In Orchids, I love those “mossy cradles,” those “Lips neither dead nor alive” & “Loose ghostly mouths. Breathing.” Breathing!
Gorgeous photos, Ann. Yesterday I saw a marsh hare hopping, two butterflies flitting & three cardinals swooping. No partridge in a tree, but the butterflies’ wings were pear-yellow.
Thanks again for the beautiful pictures and the poems. I really enjoyed both.
Ann, beautiful pictures and poem, as usual.
I just bought tickets to Momix-Botanica coming here to Nashville in March! Can’t wait.
Such beautiful photos! I too especially love the last one, of almost-sunset. And I’ve always loved the poems of Theodore Roethke. So earthy and sensual and luminous, such startling imagery — orchids as “devouring infants,” spilling out of their mossy cradles .. wow!