Echo Azure Butterfly the Bristlehead bloom — Image by kenne
Setting Sun–Painting by kenne
Sunset From Blackett’s Ridge Trail (10/11/11) — Image by kenne
Photographing Hummingbirds — Image by kenne
A hummingbird may arrive or it may not.
The camera remains, patient and indifferent.
Photography often resembles this arrangement:
a machine prepared for a moment that cannot be commanded.
The image, when it comes, will seem instantaneous.
Yet it will be the product of waiting, of expectation,
and of the photographer’s quiet belief that significance
may reveal itself in a fraction of a second.
Image by kenne
The sky
doesn’t use words.
It just turns gold,
then amber,
then impossible.
And somehow
we all get the message:
Fall is here.
Sunrise — Image by kenne
Morning Path
Life begins at dawn,
the world does not ask
where you have been.
It asks only
whether you are ready
to take the next step.
Butterfly Art by Kenne
The butterfly is only an outline,
a map of a creature
that has already escaped.
The wings are there—
carefully drawn borders,
dark edges,
the architecture of flight.
But the real butterfly
is elsewhere,
moving through sunlight,
uninterested in being captured.
The art remains,
a beautiful absence.
Image by kenne
the storm came in
like it owned the place.
the foothills went dark,
the saguaros stood there
taking it.
that’s the thing about the desert—
months of begging for rain,
then acting surprised
when it finally shows up.
Computer Art by kenne
The giant saguaros rise
from the computer screen
as they rise from the desert—
arms lifted,
silent and patient,
older than memory.
Pixels become shadows,
shadows become living forms.
The Sonoran Desert appears
not as a landscape,
but as a gathering
of ancient relatives
standing watch beneath the sky.
Shades of Red Sunset — Image by kenne
A red sunset
rests upon Tucson
like a hand
on an old friend’s shoulder.
The mountains listen.
The ocotillo stands still.
Even the wind
seems content to wait.
Then slowly,
almost tenderly,
the color fades,
leaving the desert
richer for having held it.
Yellow Salsify seeds — Image by kenne
Before the leaves have turned,
before the mountains
have lost their summer haze,
the salsify knows.
Its seeds rise
into the cooling air,
announcing a season
the rest of us
have not yet noticed.
Bottle Brush Bush Blossom — Image by kenne
The bottle brush blooms as if it remembers another country. Its scarlet flowers hang from the branches like tiny brushes dipped in paint, each one catching sunlight and holding it a moment longer than the day allows. Hummingbirds arrive without invitation. They know what I sometimes forget—that beauty does not announce itself. It waits in the yard, patient as an old relative, until someone finally looks.
Orange Sulphur On a Mexican Bird of Paradise — Image by kenne
Song of the Butterfly
(In the Style of Walt Whitman)
I celebrate the Orange Sulphur!
I celebrate the yellow wanderer,
resting for a moment upon
the red and gold extravagance
of the Mexican Bird of Paradise.
Not hurried,
not troubled by clocks or calendars,
it pauses in the desert sunlight,
its wings holding the color of ripe lemons,
of dawn breaking over distant mountains.
O small traveler!
You belong to the flowers,
to the wind,
to the same vast earth
that bears the mountains and the sea.
Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
No drama in this sky,
no thunder, no blaze—
just a quiet occupation
of white under gray.
The mountain breathes slowly
under its coverlet of cloud.
And something in me
loosens,
as if certainty were never
the point at all.
Southern Dogface On A Mexican Bird of Paradise — Image by kenne
A butterfly lands,
and for one perfect moment
the flower is still.
