Murray Robertson (photography & poems)
I make photographs and poems to please myself (and share them to please you).
tiny trucks deliver to tiny shops, as if there was room on roads. pedestrians learn quickly. out of the way! (no suitable translation springs to mind.) everyone moves aside, quickly. tiny trucks go slowly by. white-painted roads in a beautiful place. tiny trucks leave no dirty tracks on the streets. shops sell a few amazing things: exquisite art, a bowl: carved of ancient olive, grown thousands of years ago. cool shade is an under-rated blessing. just stay cool!
ruins and palms
have little value
in my daily life.
in my memories
they are magical.
stories of ruins,
of the things
that happened
there and there,
well I know that
i ought to say:
something's
very special
about the stories
i don't want to hear.
like the palms,
they are not
related to my
own stories,
or my life.
they have a very
different mesage,
maybe, while i
might have none.
my own stories or my life
nothing important,
because i must be
about as important
as an ant in a hill.
would i like to be
more important?
what kind of
responsibility
comes with that?
maybe to be an ant
is enough.
and what about
the palm and its
importance?
and the wall?
drifting along a beautiful seawall on an island, they have no agenda, nor purpose. nothing's important on a day like this. quarried stone holds back waves, waves breaking unnaturally on hard stone. make no mistake; any rock weathers on these edges. some last longer than others. these stones last longer than we do. for us the people are always the story. and here, the story is that the people do not seem so very important. not much going on, no real dramas are unfolding. the drama here is all unseen, and unseeable, or maybe the drama is the landscape.
that morning the north end of the adriatic sea, looked like a scene from a monster movie, after the crowd ran away. venice started out that way, a barbarian army at the edge of a swamp. nothing much has changed an awful mist hung over the grand canal, as we looked toward a modern art museum. maybe it excited her to support men who might some day be known as greats. you never know. a carpenter might become a fisherman; a slave might become a famous sculptor, a plowman, a poet. and we had faith that sunshine would come back.
somewhere near, a road-building project destroyed a historic wonder, i made a photograph: a very old log house. sunburned from probably a century of summer sun. logs turned rich brown and black, cracks filled with old white plaster. whitewash, maybe. i don't know the stories i can't see. i can always believe nonsense; it's a very human thing to do. the creek flowed silently past the old log house. maybe it was drinking water, though today it looks murky, a bit dangerous. old stories are impossible to prove, a bit murky, digging for truth a little quirky we turn over stones, looking to see clues to untold stories, stories we can't see.
Looking Up insignificant beside the hill, i begin to understand my importance in the scheme of things. if i were to think about my time and the scale of time these hills represent, i'd have to be impressed by my time as much as by my stature. how important i am not! i think and words come out, not always exactly appropriate; it can be a struggle. layers of sand, turned to stone, containing all the stories of so many ages. i seee it all, amazing, i am amazed. humbling, but i am not humiliated. loving the chaotic beauty of this wild place!
Vivid Sky
why do i think it's
the edge of night?
just before
the darkness
smothers colour
then darkness
comes,
and
sticky eyelids
stick shut
until morning.
why do i think it's
the edge of night?
why not:
the edge of day?
or something
else
unusual?
maybe we
should consider
mid-day
and midnight.
but nothing
seems unusual
about either.
maybe we can
forget middles
and edges
and make it
all about the sky.
seahorses
in the clouds!
here is a tree to make me happy: branches that do not meet my expectations; they all go their own puzzling ways. a pleasing chaos reigns as branches grow unpredictably, following no known patterns, growing always beautiful. shape and shade encourage my easy admiration. (hot summer days teach many meanings of oppression) we should never learn them all.
Kal Lake merging photos, makes panorama visions like we never saw before, i look out at this view i have seen every day, and always it's seemed something new. time closes in quickly, as time seems to do at the end of a long tiring day. my time's coming soon, this view will be gone, a time to just walk away . life brings us such views, then makes us choose; we turn to go forward each day.
and when we see the sky as night comes down, we see such light, amazing in our skies. how can we sleep, with colours such as these? then comes the dark, and weary eyes will rest. we sleep and wake, because we hear small birds sing, and then it's daylight, ready to enjoy another day. and we will wait until the day is gone, and we can see the sky again, amazing in our minds.
Murray Robertson (photography & poems) 