Across the water, against the oaks and pines
a house stands shuttered and withdrawn,
a single rowing boat lies beached below.
The landing stages are stranded, torn
adrift from land by time, though
waiting cages hang down still, and bent
wires, angled nails and notches scrawl
their own cyphers, unintelligible lines
of script where now there are no longer lines.
Rusted, lame and tenuous, they crawl
further away from land, and make,
year on falling year, a bleached descent,
into the thickening water of the lake.
15 comments:
It was my brother's idea to photograph the landing stages at the lake at Fontaine Daniel, so thanks to him for that. He'd been meaning to do it himself.
Wow. Wonderfully satisfying photos and poem. Worth the wait while you were away from your blog.
Wonderful poem and images, Lucy, so interesting and appropriate in black and white, a calming contrast to the rest of the colourful page.
And I love your latest poem at Compasses. Amazing how it grows.
Sweet Lucy, you really are something!
A fawn finding its feet. One of those big awkward contraptions the armies of Mordor used in the Lord of the Rings movie. These buckling docks are evocative in different directions. Wonderful photos and poem.
Love the poem and love the choice of B&W for the photos.
A nice conceit: that these structures, undergoing their bleached descent, were erected with the express intent of having them decay. That this latest state is infinitely superior (aethetically) to the original. That they were never designed to function but rather to be. What's also astonishing is the way that rectilinear has become irregular and in some cases curved. "Photograph us," they implore, "in black and white. It was always our destiny after fifty - seventy-five? - years to appear in Box Elder."
Just as Jean said - wonderfully satisfying!
Lucy, the black and white is beautiful and evocative and a lovely surprise. The images remind me of some of the lost places I used to know.
- alison
I love the atmosphere in the photographs. And in the first one I like how the eye is drawn to that boat, even though it's small it captures the attention immediately.
At first I thought this post was about simple, quiet black and white images. But there was a lovely surprise of singing words that gave them a story, a life.
Ooohhh. Almost ghostly. They remind me of so many old barns over here, no longer in use, but always there, gradually falling apart.
there's often something so wonderfully photogenic in decrepitude. lovely.
Bridges to beyond... Alluring.
Lucy, I do believe you are veering toward blank verse here! Did you consider going all the way?
Really like "bleached descent." And it's far away enough from "beached" to have a good chime without seeming too-too.
Great pictures - beautifully captured - and the poem really pleased me. Particularly that last stanza. And also the line 'torn/adrift from land by time,'
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