Forest Floor — Abstract Art by kenne
Moisture tends to bring out the colors
of old dried wood helping to color the
forest floor during the mountain rains.
— kenne
Archive for the ‘Mt. Lemmon’ Category
Forest Floor Leave a comment
An Autumn Sunrise On Mt. Lemmon Leave a comment
An Autumn Sunrise On Mt. Lemmon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Signs of autumn echoes
Throughout the forest
As time present becomes
Time past in a moment.
As the aspen leaves
Dance in the breeze
There is only the dance —
Neither moment from
Nor towards.
— kenne
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On Mt. Lemmon’s Aspen Trail Leave a comment
On Mt. Lemmon’s Aspen Trail — Image by kenne
To my poet friends, how many have had the following experience?
Reading a poem to and audience, years
after its having been published
or even revisited, I discovered a word
that should have been another, an edit
that was so obvious to me—the apt word
stealthily entering my consciousness—
I stumbled over it, embarrassingly
losing my train of thought, nervously
shifting my weight, pussyfooting—
my feet doing a little dance, behind
the speaker’s stand, my mind
in a state of reorganizational panic
as when the face of a former lover, emerges
from memory and lightly touches something
strangely new, something ethereal . . .
— from The Edit by David M. Parsons
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Mt. Lemmon Fall Color 2 comments
Mt. Lemmon Fall Colors — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Drive thirty-five miles
To mixed conifer forest
Above the desert.
— kenne
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Autumn Crocuses Leave a comment
Tom Markey on the Bear Waller Trail In The Santa Catalina Mountains (October 15, 2012) — Image by kenne
Basketing leaves during earth’s
annual leavetaking, we’ve realized
with a start—something’s missing.
The autumn crocuses that would spring
each October by the rocks.
No longer here! We never planted them,
but they implanted themselves
on us. Now, for their lack
we are poorer. Purest orchid color,
they astonished amidst the season’s
dwindling. Crocus in autumn?
How perverse, to reverse the seasons.
— from 1982: Autumn Crocuses by Robert Phillips
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Falling Leaves In The Catalina Mountains 1 comment
Fallen Leaves in the Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
It’s that time of year
Raindrops form on fallen leaves
Clouds begin to break.
— kenne
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Autumn On Mt. Lemmon — A Panorama Leave a comment
Autumn On Mt. Lemmon — A Panorama by kenne
Leaves begin to fall
Here high on Mt. Lemmon
Now wearing long sleeves.
— kenne
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Apache Beggarticks Wildflower Leave a comment
Apache Beggarticks Wildflowers On Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
As fall comes to Mt. Lemmon
The mixed conifer forest begins
To show its autumn colors as
Mountain wildflowers will remain
Until the winter snows start to fall
And Mt. Lemmon becomes a house
Without beams and walls.
— kenne
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Pipevine Swallowtail On Mt. Lemmon Leave a comment
Pipevine Swallowtail On Mt. Lemmon Trail — Image by kenne
The trailhead next to power transformers,
A path next to a chain-linked fence.
Converging rocky paths lined by ferns,
One with vistas of the valley below
The other, with a hill of pines singing, soon
Opening to a grassy meadow of wildflowers.
— kenne
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Two-tailed Swallowtail Vector Leave a comment
Two-tailed Swallowtail On Thistle On Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
Magnitude in space
Whose directed line segment
Is a space vector.
— kenne
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Aspen Fall Colors On Mt. Lemmon — Abstract Art Leave a comment
Aspen Fall Colors On Mt. Lemmon — Abstract Art by kenne
A tangle of leaves
Shimmering in a light breeze
To its own music.
— kenne
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Camphorweed Blossoms On Mt. Lemmon Leave a comment
Camphorweed Blossoms On Mt. Lemmon (August 31, 2022) — Image by kenne
Photographer
He focuses,
greens and yellows
blooming has started
surrounded by buds
museling their way
to the next stage
unraveling on
writhing stems.
— kenne
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Invoking the Full Meaning of Life 6 comments
I’m Just A Traveler In Other People’s Reality — Image by a Fellow Higher On The Trail
Invoking the Full Meaning of Life
How best to express sharing new life
when each moment deserves its face.
What seems apropos for the moment,
when the next moment fosters a unique experience.
Is it in a number?
The number of days?
The number of thoughts?
The number of heartbeats?
The number of turns?
The number of prayers?
. . . you can count the ways,
only to still not know life’s score.
Is it in a word?
Loving?
Caring?
Sharing?
Giving?
Sheltering?
Words to communicate thoughts and feelings
when manifested in knowledge and experience.
Or is it in art?
Transforming thought,
expressing feeling,
experiencing emotions and
the desire to evoke life,
even when distance
appears to separate a lifelong bond.
I wrote this in the 1990s. Since then, retirement and moved 1,000 miles from where we had spent 25 years, putting distance between bonds. In the twelve years since moving, we have watched the bonds drift away, causing me to question the desire to evoke life, even when distance can’t separate a lifelong bond.
We moved to the Sonoran desert with the illusion that friends and family would be beating a path to our new home in the desert southwest — not such luck. So we try staying in touch through social media, often questioning whether the bonds were ever real — confirming that we remain tourists in other people’s reality.
I once read a posting by blogger Old Jules, “These damned ego-warts.”
Old Jules was a 70-year-old hermit, living with three cats somewhere in the Texas Hill Country and writing a blog I enjoyed reading from time to time. Old Jules, who passed away April 21, 2020 at 74, had concluded that he has spent over a third of his life “being insignificant in the lives of others.”
In 1992, after 25 years of marriage and a career of 20 years, he began a new career and life in Santa Fe.
“All secure in the knowledge the extended family and friends remaining behind were part of my life in which I’d been and remained important.”
Over time he concluded it was all an illusion.
“Kids, young adult nephews, and nieces I’d coddled and bounced on my knee pealed out of my life-like layers of an onion. Most I never heard from again.”
He began to realize that he was merely tolerated, “. . . a piece of furniture in their lives.”
Over time he rebuilt his life with a more potent dose of skepticism concerning his worth and place in the lives of others, which resulted in his becoming a hermit.
“I no longer assume I’m important in the lives of other human beings and get my satisfaction in knowing I’m at least relevant to the cats.
Because cats, though sometimes dishonest, aren’t capable of the depth and duration of dishonesty humans indulge regularly.”
Old Jules had come to believe “. . . that life is entirely too important and too short to be wasted in insignificance.”
His new awareness of life is now in teaspoon measurements, “. . . measured in contracts with cats not equipped to lie. A determination in the direction of significance measured in teaspoons of reality,
as opposed to 55-gallon drums of dishonesty and self-delusion.”
“Teaspoons, I find, don’t spill away as much life in the discovery
when they’re found to be just another ego-wart of pride and self-importance.”
Bonds, illusion or not, have difficulty being when the moments are separated by time and distance, becoming gleams of light, for an instant, in the long night.
I understand where Old Jules was coming from and feel his disillusionment. There is, however, a binding force that comes from a homesick longing to be whole, to have completion, as Plato described in the myth of the human halves passionately striving towards one. Like all mythical totalities, humans are subject to the triple dramaturgical rhythm of primal completeness, separation catastrophe, and restoration. The most significant attraction effect occurs between the second and third acts of life’s drama, which is where I find myself today — maybe this is also where Old Jules is. I am learning to understand myself from a new divide, one half experienced, the other inexperienced — in such a way that I’m learning to understand myself in new ways.
But then, there are the darn cats!
Kika, what do you think?
Kika (She passed away December 10, 2011.)
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Mt. Lemmon Wildflower Leave a comment
Mt. Lemmon Wildflower (Mountain Marigold) — Image by kenne
Sunlight breaks through
After a heavy downpour
Turning the trail into a stream
Breaking off above the creek
Lush green and yellow colors
Coming into being on the slopes
Of my favorite mountain trail
A shadow network of sunshine
Through the trees as juncos
Twittering calls echoes in the woods.
— kenne
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Thurber Cinquefoil Wildflower Leave a comment
Thurber Cinquefoil Wildflower — Image by kenne
“Love is like wildflowers;
It’s often found in the most unlikely places.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Becoming is Superior to Being 