Rose Lake in the Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
— kenne
White Clouds Under a Cloud Cover — Image by kenne
— kenne
Great Horned Owl — Image by kenne
— kenne
Richardson’s Geranium — Image by kenne
Marine Blues On Moist Rocks Near a Mountain Stream — Image by kenne
Butterflies on moist rocks,
suddenly the world makes sense.
Color speaking to color,
wing touching wind.
Yes, I think—
this is how things work.
Then, the butterflies lift,
vanish off the rocks,
and the rocks stand alone
with their quiet question.
I get it.
Then I don’t.
— kenne
Sneezeweed in the Wind On Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
A gust arrives
and the sneezeweed bows
all at once.
Someone might call this
wildflower behavior.
But from where I’m standing
it looks suspiciously like art—
yellow disks
sketching circles in the air
while the wind
keeps erasing the drawing.
— kenne
Mushroom in Pine Needles — Image by kenne
Under ponderosa shade
one pale cap
holding up
a whole sky of trees.
— kenne
Acorn Radicle — Image by kenne
Still clinging to its mother branch,
the acorn refuses good manners.
It should wait. The branch says, stay.
The wind says, soon. The acorn says, now.
So it splits its dark shell
sending a pale root nosing into open air—
a small act of rebellion against gravity,
a white question mark lowered into nothing.
In harsh country
you don’t wait for perfect ground.
You start the root before the fall.
You trust the dirt you haven’t met yet.
That’s how deserts are made—
not from patience,
but from something stubborn
refusing to postpone its life.
— kenne
Birdbill Dayflower — Image by kenne
In the high canyons
of the Santa Catalinas,
the Birdbill Dayflower
blooms testing the theory:
that beauty
need not last
to matter.
By dusk, it has folded
its argument into seed.
— kenne
Golden Columbine — Image by kenne
On black
the gold grows louder.
Each curve deliberate,
each throat of light
a doorway inward.
Look long enough
and the flower
becomes landscape.
— kenne
Saguaro Sunrise — Image by kenne
Saguaro cactus at sunrise—
you say endurance,
beauty against all odds.
I see a drunk saint
full of needles
hoarding water like secrets.
The sun bleeds out behind it
without apology.
If there’s a lesson there,
it’s that even the harshest thing
knows how to bloom
when it has to.
— kenne
Male Phainopepla — Image by kenne
He is so high in the mesquite
I must squint—
An ace of spades caught in thorns.
Yet I feel the small red spark
of his eye
fasten to me.
The branch yields, does not surrender.
My grandmother said
real strength makes no announcement;
it simply remains.
He falls—
a swift stroke of black—
and rises again
to the same waiting limb.
Nothing altered, it seems.
But the desert keeps a breath
between his leaving and return,
and in that held silence
my heart shifts,
quiet as sand
after the wind.
— kenne
Hazy Morning Sun In Sabino Canyon — Silhouette Image by kenne
— kenne
Mushrooms and Moss on Mt. Lemmon — Image by kenne
— kenne
Mushroom Art — Image by kenne
— kenne
