A Dog Named Boo

Click photos to enlarge.

The Two of Us

She has followed me quietly through the house,

halting a step behind me when I stop.

Looking down I find her gazing up placidly with brown eyes

that have taken me inside of her for 11 years now.

Bending I pet her head; speaking softly

while holding her graying muzzle in my palm.

She begins to wiggle like a puppy

and her eyes betray a light

that wasn't there a moment before.

There's something here for both of us.

Boo came into my life in the summer of 1996 when I rescued her from the pound.

In the first year or two of our time together I found a lump on her back which turned out to be cancerous. The vet removed it and no problem remained.

Winter or summer she loved to go out and sit on the hill overlooking the lake. Especially on Moby Dick, a mound of snow that would blow in around the car in the driveway and form what looked like a great white whale.

Sometimes she would charge down the hill to meet her pal who lived at the bottom of the hill. They would go sniffing around together, enjoying dog stuff.

Boo was a gentle spirit with soft, mellow brown eyes allowing me to look deep into her being. Seeing her soul in this way was a humbling experience, and I came to know she was a completely honest, guileless person.

One thing she loved to do was hunt. No rodent was safe if she knew it was there. Her sense of smell was acute, and on walks I would have to stop while she dug under a rock or board to get at a small creature that was burrowed there.

After her hunt, which was usually successful, one or two quick snaps of her head would stop the creature from wriggling. The sound of her crunching the animal in her mouth was disconcerting. But she had no malice in her at all. It was part of the process of life.

Then there was Lucky. Lucky was a stray kitten I picked up and he became Boo's closest buddy. He really misses Boo. I can tell because immediately after Boo was gone he began to spend his time with me.

Boo and Lucky were a genuine odd couple. It was Lucky, who sought out Boo for friendship. Boo's personality was so mild that she rarely showed what I would call emotion. But sometimes it was evident. (You can see the tumor that took her life on her hind leg. The vet said it was enormous. She died after having the leg amputated.)



I really miss Boo. She possessed a deep peace and a seeming acknowledgment of the completeness of her existence in the present. I came to understand this while looking deep into her eyes. It was all she had, and as far as I can tell it is all there is.


Text and Photographs Copyright 2008 by David H. Roche

Catching The Sun

Working nights has its benefits. Moments like these would be lost in the hurry to get to work and the fog of sleep. But coming home from work I'm wide awake and the coming of sunrise offers a tranquil way to slow the mind down.

What follows is the capture of a sunrise after a freezing rain in early March 2008. If you click on the photographs they will enlarge.



Colors appear in the East.
soft and muted through the thicket
on the hill.

Then the sun appears
on the hills
on the other side of the lake

and kindles in the tinder of branches
at the edge of my yard

setting them on fire.

Ice droplets
in the tree tops
sparkle in the morning sun
against a blue sky.

In the thicket below something else is happening.

A curtain of ice crystals sparkles.

It dazzles the eyes.














Becoming more

and more

intricate each moment.

Greater beauty emerges

everywhere.

Some of it

astonishing

giving something to reflect on.

Text and Photographs Copyright 2008 by David H. Roche

Content At Last

Finally I see...
this life is no more than moonlight
on the surface of a river;

or the trail birds leave in the sky.

Click photos to enlarge for detail.

The photos were taken within several hundred feet of each other at different times. The moon photo looking east, and the sunset looking west. The photo of the moon was taken 2/20/08 at moonrise, and the photo of the birds in the bronze sky were taken 6/11/07 at sunset by myself so they are Copyright material by David H. Roche in the year 2008.

Tulips

On February 14^th

she sent me flowers,

tulips pink.

Black Coffee Blues

Black Coffee Blues

Finding myself up well before the sun
stumbling through the confusion of darkness and silence
before consciousness tricks me into existence
with the accompaniment of a bitter cowboy ballad.

Black coffee and Gram Parsons at 5 o'clock;
as the lights come on inside
I sit shivering the first day of December
and begin to contemplate the blackness outside.

_______________

The darkness holds the potential of forms. It is full of them...
sometimes there is an escape ...



...and then things begin to happen!


Text and Photographs Copyright 2007 by David H. Roche

Disappear With Me

I went outside at twilight. A balmy late September evening. The air and the colors were so very soft. This mood came over me as I walked. Disappear With Me


The Night Comes

I'm disappearing into the September twilight
but the road just keeps going on;
the colors and eternal contours attending evening
hint at something.

Disappear with me, you have no choice, you will.
We'll sleep though winter,
waking to the 'purple-dee' cacophony
of red-winged black birds returning to fill the trees again.

Text and photographs Copyright 2007 by David H. Roche

A Few Minutes With A Sunrise

I arrived home just in time to see the sun come up over the horizon.

It took just a few moments for it to rise and be entirely free from the obscurity that the earth had provided.

Below is a link to a slideshow of the event.

http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u241/Hermenutic/?action=view&current=1cd726e8.pbw

Text and photographs Copyright 2007 David H. Roche

The Stone Fence

The Stone Fence

Made of irregular,
strategically placed pieces of slate
positioned in precise relationship to every other piece,
the fence manifests a time proven technique.
In it a chipmunk has found a niche
and sits watching me while I eat.

The simple construction leaves gaps
and when tiring of watching me
he scurries through a labyrinth of interconnected corridors
and small chambers within its core;
returning intermittently into the dapple of sunlight
to sit and watch me again.

Text and photographs Copyright 2007 David H. Roche

Thinkin'

August 2nd 2007. I got up at 6 and went to the park at the foot of the lake. It's a good time to go as there are only a few people there at that time.

I had been there a day or two before and had taken some photographs. When I saw how they came out with the colors and the light making such desirable effects I decided to go back again at the same time of day to get the same kind of sunlight. I'm pleased with the way it came out.




Owasco Lake is a tranquil place in the early hours of the morning. Being a life long resident of the area, this is a familiar scene and the smooth natural contours have impressed themselves into my mind so that they are at home in me and I with them.





Standing at the end of the East Pier looking south around the bend and straight down is Moravia.


The lake begins about 11 miles south at Moravia. It is one of the Finger Lakes, gouged from the earth by the activity of glaciers long ago. This knowledge that we are not in control and that something else makes things happen above and beyond all we can do is sobering. It is also illuminating.

Back at the beach, in Emerson Park there is the pavilion. A place where 3 or 4 generations of young people have come to go through the courting ritual of the dance, end up married and raise families. It offers a ballroom style ambiance in a rustic setting with a fantastic multi-faceted mirrored chandelier that reflects the light in colored splashes all over the dance floor. Local bands play.

Some return to collect their memories

This photographic slide show finds me thinking of all those things.

http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u241/Hermenutic/?action=view&current=575aa4c1.pbw

Photographs and text Copyright 2007 David H. Roche

Rose Garden in the Moonlight

'I have a rose garden'; she said.
The petals opened as I gazed.
'There are no thorns at all,
'It's a mystery, come in and see' she whispered,
as I lingered at her gate,
but at her invitation

I entered without wait.

(click to enlarge photograph)

Text and photographs Copyright 2008 David H. Roche

Fellow Travelers

When you take the time to look into the sky for a few hours, especially the night sky, and you observe the moon you know that it is not hanging there, you know that something is moving. When you think about it you know it is always moving and if you think further you understand that everything is always moving. The conclusion is that we are traveling together.

There is a commonly accepted view that who we are is determined by the sum of our thoughts and confined in a bag of flesh that is given shape by our bones. However careful scrutiny has revealed this to be an illusion. Accepting this illusion as genuine results in the troubles that we have in the world today. It results in wars between people and it results in isolating the individual and hiding him / her from him / her self.

This destruction of the self replicates itself in the world at large as people join themselves into groups, societies and governments, resulting in greater widescale destuctive activity. This is all derived from the illusion of a seperate self.

What is genuine is that everyone and everything is interconnected with everything else to such a degree that if you step back far enough it will become clear that everything is the expression of one living organism i.e. the universe. Once this is understood there can be a genuine caring for those we consider others because they, the others, are in reality our own self. Christian thought requires us to love others as we love ourselves, and this construction of reality allows that to happen as a matter of understanding the nature of life. It also opens up the door to a genuine ethical base that requires no artifice to make it work.

This is an idea that seems at first glance to be unusual: I think it is true. So I look at the sun and the moon and the stars and feel the breeze on my skin and I see it all and I see myself within the same setting they are in and part of it as well. I see myself moving with it endlessly, independent of this bag of bones and small collection of thoughts and ideas that are clamoring to identify me and chain me in one spot.

Step back and get the whole picture.That was the underlying idea in my mind when I took these photographs.

Enjoy the slideshow.

http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u241/Hermenutic/?action=view&current=e7143dab.pbw

Text and photographs Copyright 2007 David H. Roche

Time

Take a walk out the end of the driveway with me and around the corner to Silver Street hill.

There's a lot happening here on the hill over time, and time just keeps on being here.

We'll look at just a little bit of it. There's a lot more.

First of all let me show you the hill in winter. It's not an inviting place.

But in summer. It's much nicer.

In between a lot happens. In the slideshows you can see some of what goes on.

Beginning at the end of my driveway is a field of buckwheat with a barn about a mile away in the middle of the photograph. Next there is a view of two barns. The older of the two has been the subject of a lot of my photographs and can be seen in earlier blog entries. Looking down Townline Road to the west my dog Boo is doing whatever it is she does. She's an old gentle dog with a quiet spirit.

http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u241/Hermenutic/?action=view&current=c6d6271d.pbw

Around the corner on Townline Road and onto the crest of Silver Street hill a panorama comes to view. Most of the photographs in the slideshows were taken about 8:30 on the evening of July 18th 2007

Along the roadside there are many marvels. Mostly flowers that make me smile. Here are a few I saw this evening. Some experiences have made it hard for them, but they have taken it in stride. No matter what, they have survived and will continue to do so. Let's take it from a place close to the beginning. We call it the beginning, but in forever there is no beginning.

We start with Day Lily shoots in April and looking at how they have progressed and the neat things that accompany them. It's all blossoms from that point on. We're walking together along the roadside. An interesting feature of the Day Lilies is that their tubers, which are small fleshy white nubs, and their petals are edible. The tubers have a mild onion flavor, and the petals can be used as a colorful and edible garnish for salads.

http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u241/Hermenutic/?action=view¤t=68d9b426.pbw

On the way back up the hill we find these beauties.

http://s170.photobucket.com/albums/u241/Hermenutic/?action=view¤t=6a82eb17.pbw

There are ways but the Way is uncharted;

There are names but not nature in words:

Nameless indeed is the source of creation

But things have a mother and she has a name.

The secret waits for the insight

Of eyes unclouded by longing;

Those who are bound by desire

See only the outward container.

These two come paired but distinct

By there names.Of all things profound,

Say that their pairing is deepest,

The gate to the root of the world.

The above passage from the Tao Te Ching - The Way of Life is
Translated by Raymond B Blakney 1955. The entire text is available at the link below.

http://www.mountainman.com.au/taotrans.html

Except for the passage taken from the Tao Te Ching the photographs and text are produced by David H. Roche, copyright 2007

Forest Path: a kind of faith

Below is a poem I wrote after examining the photograph I took of a forest glade and path. The camera catches what 'is', the mind makes something else of it. I made the poem.

Forest Path: a kind of faith

There is more than one way out of the woods.
One way says that black does not exist without white
anymore than 'I' exists without 'Thou'.

The path my feet are on cannot be seen,
it winds beneath the undergrowth
while the random splattering of sunlight hints at revelations.

I never know where I am;
but knowing that the forest, the sky and I are one
means that I am never lost.

Text and photograph Copyright 2007 David H. Roche