Category: Art

Another Bela poem

I am so impressed by Bela’s poems!

Here it is:

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Ungovernable

We need not allow age to define us
unless we hunger to be named
by something outside ourselves.

Mother Nature is as old as time,
yet remains a woman of mystery—
unmapped,
unmastered,
not to be taken lightly.

While many elders
have been pressed into a mold, 
muffled by expectation,
cinched into compliance—

she rises.

She takes back her ancient names:
crone, hag, witch—
titles once meant to diminish,
now worn like iron and bone.

She will not shrink.
She will not bow.

Lately, she has been speaking.

Heavy tropical rains—
record-breaking—
islands flooding,
the ground unable to drink
what the sky insists on unleashing.

And today—
thunder.

Lightning.

Rare here.
Almost unheard of.

Rain fell in sheets,
fire-hosing off corrugated roofs
into earth already swollen,
already saturated.

And then—

CRACK.
FLASH.
BOOM.

The sky split.

The dog and I
jettisoned from our bodies—
he barking, pacing,
drawn to the door
but unwilling to cross the threshold.

This was not weather.

This was visitation.

The center—
ripped out of the moment,
out of the body,
out of the small illusion of control.

This is what elder women become
when the blinders fall away:

not gentle,
not contained,
not agreeable.

We become weather.

We become voice.

We become the force
that cannot be managed
by the structures that once confined us.

Ungovernable.

Unapologetic.

Unsilenced.

We rise—
not in defiance alone,
but in remembrance.

And we will not be silenced again.

before the storm ~ bj 2026

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To my mind that is the power and beauty of nature – it is ungovernable.

Perfect poetry

Bela provides another stunning poem.

Bela places a beautiful photograph at the end of her poem. I am going to place it at the start.

Rio Grande at Abiquiu ~ bj 2022

A Bend in the River

 ~ BELA JOHNSON

The river winds, twists,
folds back onto itself —
or so it seems.

The current moves
one way.
Appearances deceive.

From above, the loop
looks like return.
Up close, it is
only a means
to move through
the landscape
as it must.

Ripples, eddies,
the low hum beneath —
all of it movement.

When I was younger
I wanted rapids,
white churn,
the reckless drop
into whatever came.

And once it dropped
I did not care
which fork opened.
Adventure for its own sake.
I mistook intensity
for aliveness.
The current felt like enough.

I mistook velocity
for direction.
Only later did I learn
the choosing was mine.

Others named the banks.
Called it grace.
Called it destiny.

But the river was never theirs
to direct.

It kept its own counsel.
I watched for years.

Until I understood:
no god could ford it for me.
No faith could walk
that valley in my stead.

The bend only appears
to return.

It does not.

It deepens,
and goes on —
beyond the bend,
beyond the frame.

Picture Parade Five Hundred and Twelve

In honour of July 4th and America’s 250th birthday.

(And they were to be shown on the 22nd February but the snowy scenes took priority.)

These are photographs of Mount Rushmore Natioanl Memorial.

They have not be taken by me and hopefully the photographers who did take them will allow me to republish them,

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Gutzon Borglum was the principal sculptor at Mt Rushmore

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Impressive!

Gutzon Borglum did an incredible work of sculpture. Just amazing!

Oregon – The Beaver State.

I am republishing a NextDoor News Feed created by Sammie Nolan that I read yesterday. Here is the photo that accompanied the note.

And here is that news item:

Happy Birthday, Oregon! 🥳

Today, February 14, 2026, the Beaver State officially turns 167 years old.

Oregon joined the Union as the 33rd state on Valentine’s Day in 1859, making it the only state to share its birthday with the holiday of love. 🥰

That is Sammie sitting on the bench and the photograph was taken at the Painted Hills. Some more information on Painted Hills courtesy of WikiPedia.

The Painted Hills is a geologic site in Wheeler County, Oregon that is one of the three units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument along with Sheep Rock and Clarno. It totals 3,132 acres and is located 9 miles northwest of Mitchell, Oregon. The Painted Hills are listed as one of the Seven Wonders of Oregon. Wikipedia

Picture Parade Five Hundred and Nine

The photographs from Historical Merlin.

Pigeon-hawk

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Haynes Family Apple Tree

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Haynes Family Apple Tree

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Mary Peters “Indian Mary’

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Picture Parade Five Hundred and Four

The pictures from my grandson.

My grandson, Morten, is quite an accomplished photographer. He uses my son’s previous camera, a Lumix DMC G7. Morten is fourteen. These photographs are locations in Southern England.

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Beautiful, Stunning, and Perfect.

It’s stating the obvious but all the above photographs are Copyright 2025 Morten Ronning, and All Rights Are Reserved.

Picture Parade Five Hundred and Two

I am very grateful for being given permission to republish these photographs.

They are from the website capturetheatlas.com and the photographer concerned is Dan Zafra.

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These photographs are perfect. The lighting, the landscape, the setting; just brilliant.

Dan Zafra is an artist!

Finally, we are at the shortest day of the year: the Winter Solstice.

Picture Parade Five Hundred and One

Once more pictures from UnSplash.

Photo by Harshal on Unsplash

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Photo by Zoshua Colah on Unsplash

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Photo by Elin Wahlqvist on Unsplash

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Photo by Tatiana Mokhova on Unsplash

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Photo by amin rezvan on Unsplash

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Photo by Liz Morgan on Unsplash

Makes me feel sleepy just looking at these gorgeous dogs!

Rebecca Stott

Speaks on BBC Radio 4 this week.

Let me offer you Rebecca Stott’s website.

Now I am going to republish that site because it is the only way I can think of to spread the word more widely.

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Rebecca also writes for radio. She has been a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio Four over the years.

Her radio essay ‘Reflections on My Mother’s Kenwood Mixer’, a homage to her mother’s gritty resilience in times of trouble, promoted scores of people on Twitter and Facebook to share stories about Kenwoods and their own steely mothers. Her essay ‘On Waiting’, tells the story of being marooned with her daughters at dusk in a bus-stop in remote Norfolk during a Covid lockdown. Her essay ‘House Clearing’ tells the story of the strangeness of dismantling her mother’s house after she had moved into a carehome. And her final essay for the programme, ‘On Migration’, describes an astonishing ten days in which hundreds of wild geese flew across the skies of her home town, as well the story of the great philosopher Aristotle study of migrating birds whilst himself a migrant in flight for his life on the island of Lesbos.

You’ll find a link to Rebecca’s Private Passions episode here too. A kind of Desert Island Discs without the Desert Island…. and with the extraordinary composer Michael Berkeley in the interview seat.

Also here is her five-part series commissioned by Radio Four in 2025 called Beautiful Strangeness. You can find the link below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002fv7z/episodes/player

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Being the age I am, Rebecca’s Beautiful Strangeness programmes spoke to me in a way that I find difficult to put into words but nonetheless the series did.

Perfect!