Wild Hibiscus Tree – Harlequin and Friends
I’ve been observing the activity and tracking the residents for a while now, down in the forest, on the wild Hibiscus tree. The tree has white flowers with a dark red heart, beautiful clean colour when new. And a contrast that reaches deep inside, in sense.
The leaves have been mostly eaten for a while now, since the tree is also home to a few other creatures besides the Harlequin bug. There are small reddish brown beetles that roam all over the place, including all over the harlequins, who seem to mind quite a bit, getting very agitated when one climbs on their back.
The flower houses a host of squat dark flies that only seem to leave that dark heart when I disturb them, by moving the flower. Lately there has been a burgeoning of other bugs, such as the black and yellow assassins pictured, who seem to transform to the red and yellow beauty by climbing out of their old jacket.
Nothing like a new set of clothes to set you free.
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The Harlequin is definitely the star of this show though. At first I thought I was lucky to get a few shots of an individual. Then I got a few shots of a few more individuals. That’s when I realised the hibiscus tree is home to these beautiful creatures, they didn’t go away.
Over time I visited the tree and observed the Harlequin bug in the various stages of its development. I watched it mature, eat, commune, grow wings, mate, lay eggs and guard and incubate them. Saw the young hatch and then herd themselves around the tree with the adult looking on for a short while.
It has been an eventful time, Hibiscus Harlequin time.
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A privilege really, to witness the life of these beautifully coloured creatures. And here you have it in the comfort of your home, no need to go down the bug infested forest, with mozzies and little black biting midges chasing you.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Silver Song
Born of the blackness cold, my love.
To colour the light I am. In line and form a ringing.
Afire, in thirst, of experience. The mad singing.
Where change rakes the dead embers of mind.
Pain, old friend. What else.
To buff the point of being I am, a sharpness mirrored round.
Pierce the veil of shadows. That I am found.
Emerge, o silver singer. To do it all once more.
When all I want is Thee my love.
Return, awake, to the shore.
Of death, the boon of Thine.
Come take me home at last, my lord.
Oh. Cold blackness mine.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Whose Art Was That?
It is easy to judge, seeing things positionally, from a place of identity. Partial being. The difficulty is in extracting the value of experience, it should tell all is change while I remain I behind. It does, but it takes a long time, and long pain.
But judgement is a pernicious habit of the machine mind. Which takes its rise from the momentum of life itself, never giving up. As can be seen all around in the forms of nature, or not nature.
The force of it can be overcome. Not by opposition, but by surrender. Surrender of the force. For all force is it. This is being without the force of existence, the power behind – no more need to die.
It is this knowledge that reveals the truth in every body. Living is the art, I am the artist, in any body.
The one artist within. Being art. No exceptions.
The art of being.
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As I came round the bend of the track in the forest there he was, or was it she. Sitting on a tendril of green overhanging the trodden path, a fly.
Blue, red eyed creature. Little beauty. Unafraid he sat, for long enough to image. Coming and going, and coming again.
A few days later there he was again. Same tendril, same fly.
He winked, I know.
Old friend.
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Ya just gotta laugh at it all sometimes.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Breakdown
It’s what happens to things. And everything’s a thing so everything breaks down some time.
What makes it time a thing breaks down? It’s time; it’s time to break down. It’s time in the order of things.
All things are ordered. The earth, the solar system, the universe, the whole of existence is ordered. You didn’t think it was disordered, did you?
Being ordered it all breaks down to order, right on time.
It’s bloody perfect. Perfectly ordered.
Perfect breakdown. :)
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Masked Paramour
Sitting in the flower tops, waiting for her love.
Surrounded by the colour blue, and mauve.
Round and round she went to see.
Arms outstretched, but not to me.
Once a beckoning, it seems.
Then strikes a pose, of themes?
I don’t wonder that she would feel.
And along comes a meal.
Not so easy, the meal.
One finds there little appeal.
The other, oh well, away on the wind.
Love returns, eventually, in kind.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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