Skystrider

A spider spins its web.

Only by vagaries of light and shadow, and slight twists of perspective, do the lines of the web become briefly visible, distilled out of the air; already the outmost frame is done, subtending the flat face of a hedge and the jutting overhang of a branch.

From this outer boundary the spider winds inwards, ring by tighter ring. Its legs move in rapid synchrony; the purpose accorded each apprehended only after long watching. One leg draws the silk out, another guides the forming strand. And the other legs pull and scuttle, by which the spider traverses its spiralling path.

On the downward arc each ring, the spider from a higher strand reaches towards a lower one, and for a moment its weight hangs singly from the higher strand. Upon its forelegs meeting the bottom strand, the spider releases its grasp of the upper, to the effect of a sudden rebound the force of which sways the entire web. After, each of these strands has a marked sag. But the upward arcs of the spider appear less excitatory.

The spider moves in intricate dance, but with conspicuous urgency; its art its sustenance. Deft the work, frenetic the maker.

Later, after the rain, crystal beads encrust the tattered web. In the centre huddles the spider, its artifice and abode thrashed by wind and water. Yet it strode the air, and endured even the falling of the sky.

#Vancouver
#spider

"the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience" - Frank Herbert

Midnight Snack

Suburban midnight: long shadows dappling wan lamp light, parked car black and burnished, empty road, the curb, long narrow strip of greenery of conscientious grass and ample bushes.
And a raccoon stands upon its two hind legs, in the midst of its foraging. It is nearly melted into the dark and night, but the mask upon its face and its furtive paws lie in even deeper shadow.
Clever hands, wondering eyes, midnight wanderer journeying for food.

#Vancouver
I love #Raccoons
#Raccoon

Filigree
#Vancouver

Leaves and stems teem in a panoply of Springtime. A burst of deep green, the spread of a plant waxen bold and vital. Glow and dapple, sunlight filtering through the younger tender foliage. And a vestige of Winter, a dead leaf.

What remains of the dead leaf are delicate, enduring tracings, and a few clinging fragments where once was verdant garb. The skeleton holds its old contour and form; for death has not yet wholly unmade the work of life. No longer to catch the sun, the leaf is mast without a sail, a vacant network where only memory abides.

Decay churns with fecundity, this brief span of Spring. A leaf is dead and is a window, whose panes are past, whose view is future.

Sky Floe
#Vancouver

A fan of clouds unfurls upon the sky. In the centre, behind where the clouds crowd most densely, hangs the sun. The clouds have flattened the sun into a blank white; the sun’s light reveals the gossamer form of the clouds.

Neither solid nor sundered, the clouds are multitude — and unified in a single sweep of motion.

Almost diaphanous, darkened by the shadows of their neighbours, and illumined by the reflections also of the same, woven through with tracings of Summer blue: so the clouds, the sky.

Flotsam
Wreck Beach, #vancouver

A piece of wood lies upon the beach. The outline of the wood is formed of gaunt contours, abrupt edges, ripples and hollows. Holes bore through the body of the wood, meeting, tangling in its secreted interior. The striations of time and the worry of nature have etched their imprint all its surface.

The sun is concealed behind cloud, the wet sand beneath reflects the flat grey luminance. In stark shadow and light, this flotsam is austere, almost regal.

Rust Portal
On a dock in #Vancouver harbour

Occupying the foreground is a metal plate, with bolts spaced evenly across its surface, and a raised narrow tab with a hole at its far edge. Rust spreads across the entire metal assemblage, splotches of bright orange twisted around patches of darker red.

In the background, and seen through the hole in the metal tab, are the blurred outlines and diffuse colours of the harbour; a soft mixture of yellow and blue in the sky, low rolling mountains dark but dotted with houses, the water a mirror for the colours above with the perturbations of only gentle waves.