Magpie Tales 90 - Cemetery Strolls

Magpie Tales by Tess Kincaid

Cemetery Strolls

Just Mother and Me

Seeing the sights

In ancient Rome

Old World Cemeteries.

All those miles in a stroller

All those centuries of history

Names carved in marble

Shelley, Keats, Bellini, 

Sir Thomas Moore and Michelangelo.

Cathedrals and cemeteries

Frescos and fountains

Fables and myth

Etched into a young mind

Recorded on Kodak film.

Albums of photographs

Recording me at two

Before Bellini's crypt

On the square at St. Peter's

Memorial to martyrdom.

At times most alone

I go to cemeteries

Walk among the monuments

To lives I never knew

And feel at home.

J. Binford-Bell

November 2011

Visit Magpie Tales for links to other poetic flights spurred by Tess Kincaid's photographic prompt. 

Bird of a feather

Raven Chatter by J. Binford-Bell

Bird of a feather

Raven

Of Edgar Allan

Standing so still

Not on a door or window sill

But a log of petrified wood.

Poe's bird of Nevermore

Speaking nonsense in the desert sun

Not a midnight dark and gloomy

Cocking head to stare

Fixing me with its stony gaze.

I stood and stared back

Waited for him to fly away

But still he stood as if wanting 

To speak to me

Relay some important message.

I crept close with camera

To listen to the whispers from his feathers

Or capture his spirit in pixels

And he opened his beak

And cackled. 

The breeze ruffled his feathers

I waited for him to fly

But still so stoically he stood

Not until I walked away

Did he fly.

Had he been waiting for me

Some message to pass on

Evermore

Not nevermore

Poe's raven had it wrong.

J. Binford-Bell

November 2011

Note: Posted to The Gooseberry Garden Poetry Picnic

Walnut Canyon National Monument

Cliff Dwelling at Walnut Canyon

Walnut Canyon National Monument was one of the last parks we visited on our Arizona junket. We did Sunset Crater, Wupatki Pueblo, and Walnut Canyon all in one day because of their proximity to each other. It could have been a park too many. We had been given rave reviews of it but compared to the others we had seen it seemed rather less than spectacular but that could be due to landscape.

Walnut canyon itself is gray. And the canyon is narrow. The cliff dwellings are built in the layers of the canyon walls. It reached its highest population density after Sunset Crater erupted. Safety seemed the primary concern of the residents.

Looking down in the canyon from the 240 steps to the bottom

There is a stream at the bottom of the canyon but it comes and goes dependent upon rainfall. The residents farmed the land at the top and built extensive trails to to other pueblos around the canyon walls and from top to bottom. The ledges are narrow and the cliff faces steep. Hopefully nobody walked in their sleep.

Debbie walking but the remains of a pueblo

As you travel down to the bottom and around the loop trail you pass the remains of many dwellings and see them everywhere on the cliffs around you. It must have been a busy center of activity.

Hidden in the canyon walls

Debbie talking to one of the shadow people

Rock Eroded by wind

Tree hanging on to cliff

At Bottom Looking up

The modern steps and paths were laid out during the depression. There are 240 steps down and you have to do those up too. No elevators. Great exercise. Yes, those tiny little figures are people walking down. And yes, it was worth the trip but we took more pictures on the way up than down. It gave us an excuse to stop and catch our breath.

Once upon a time

Once Upon a Time

It was a dark and stormy night

No scratch that

Zip

Crunch

Feed in new sheet of paper.

Once upon a midnight dreary

Erase dreary

Deep?

Return

Once upon a midday last.

New sheet of paper

All nice and blank

Stare

Sip coffee

The lonely writer sat.

First chapters are the hardest

Begin with number two

hmmmm

Sip

The bed where he had lain was cold.

Light streamed through the basement window

Erase that line

No

Chapter 3

How long had the sun been up?

How long had he been dead

Here in his basement office

Writing

Not Writing

Goodbye cruel world.

The suicide note began

Still rolled into the typewriter

Crumpled paper

Everywhere

Body on the bed across the room.

J. Binford-Bell

October 2011

Painted Silence

Painted Silence

Surrounded by hills of painted sand

Whispering of a past long gone

Listening for wild calls of a forest primeval

Drowned beneath the roasting sun.

Walking a trail winding down

Into the erased past beneath

The hills of vivid color so silent

Swallowing every breath of air.

Above on the canyon rim

A reality turned unreal

Descending step by step into silence

Listening for whispers not there.

Surrounded by sands of a time long gone

Transfigured matter which speaks

In whispers not audible

Entombed in colored sands.

J. Binford-Bell

October 2011

San Mateo Mesa

San Mateo Mesa at sunset

My sister lives in a marvelous section of the state of New Mexico. It is filled with an abundance of little side trips you can take that get you beyond power poles and city boundaries. So when I arrived at San Fidel in the very early afternoon of our fist day of vacation we immediately loaded up the fur kids and headed for San Mateo Mesa to catch the late afternoon sun on the rock formations there.

My father maintained that Interstate 40 and 25 were positioned to go through the most boring parts of the state so people would just keep passing through. Surely they chose the routes for ease of building but the result was the same. Just off the highways lie the most interesting spots.

Lowering sun on outcrop of rock

The rock colors in this federally maintained land were fantastic. I found myself wondering if to a geologist they meant something because it is a mine exploration area and there are some mines on the fringes out of sight.

Hoodoos or vodoos or goblins

Wild variances in colors abound augmented by lichens. For a photographer it was a visual banquet.

And the rock formations are extremely varied. It was amazing to find it all in one short afternoon outing.

Debbie on top of a plateau

Ridge of rock

Reflection in a stock pond

Mesa View

San Mateo Mesa area is used for grazing and hunting and camping as well as mining. It is one of the federal lands where the combination seems to work well. I know two photographers that will probably be going back for more photos and off roading.

More of the Grand Canyon

The recent trip to the Grand Canyon was scheduled for one day. Actually we had only one goal and that was to photograph sunrise and its effects up the canyon walls. We left Flagstaff at 4 a.m. to make the west end of the south rim trail and set up tripods before dawn. No place to eat was open that early and so breakfast waited until after the sun was fully up. And so did the rest of the canyon.

Don't get me wrong. The Grand Canyon is spectacular in any light especially if you have never seen it. But mid day is not great for photographers. And the vistas can get like one more flavor at Baskin-Robbins. Both my sister and I have decided on a return trip of multiple days and staying a lot closer to the focus of our attentions. We want several sunrises and sunsets and we want more days to give all the views their due.

Where we photographed dawn is one of the most visited spots. As you head east on the rim highway the canyon broadens out and the sun rises higher in the sky. My first look at the photos I took along this path did not excite me. But just a bit of tweaking on brightness/contrast brought out the colors the digital megapixels had captured. And because the canyon is wider there are less dark shadows to distract from the patterns in the landscape below you. I found myself wishing I had taken more pictures in this expanse of canyon but I was dealing with a 3:30 am wake up and sensory overload.

Looking west at the Colorado River

At this point, near desert view, the canyon seems more like a broad valley than a grand canyon. But you get a good view of the Colorado River winding its way through the softer sandstone. Further east the river is in cased in harder rock and ergo the canyon narrower. Here it gets to meander.

Looking east at the Colorado

In this view you can see Hanse Rapid. If I remember correctly, when I went down the Colorado on a raft this was the first fun rapid. It is almost a mile long and has seven holes and crests. It is like riding a roller coaster. Doesn't look like much from up here.

The colors of the Grand Canyon are all about the layers of sediment and rock laid down at the bottom of a huge inland sea. The Colorado River exposes layer after layer after the uplift of the Colorado Plateau. The canyon also changes color based on the sun and where it is the sky. Here it was almost directly overhead. There are no shadows.

Now that I have seen the Canyon in dawn and full sun I definitely want to see it at sunset and in stormy weather.