It’s Never Too Late
These shots are of creatures that are seen only around the outside light at night. The largest creature here is the first at about 2mm wide head. The others are so small they are unidentifiable to the naked eye.
To rise up.
It’s never too late to throw off the chains.
Never too late to be new.
It’s never too late to give up the mantra, the one that keeps you from love.
“I can’t!” “Why me?” “It isn’t supposed to be this way.” “Something’s wrong.”
The mantra of mind that sees only what is gone, and never the way it really was, or is.
It’s never too late to say it’s good. Good to be alive! Well done! That’s lovely!
It’s never too late to step out of your skin. The one as me ‘this’ or me ‘that’.
It’s never too late.
*
Well, I suppose it can be too late.
The sun sets, the stars shimmer only once just that way, the same rain never falls twice.
But it’s never too late to dance for the pleasure of it, or sing a little song.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Spider Time
As soon as the weather started turning warm again I noticed an increase in the flying population. Small creatures to start with, then some bigger ones, gnats, midges etc. then bees, wasps, beetles and still getting bigger. Dragonflies have started their first wave of the new year in earnest; there are many young ones about where there is water.
Water, life to all things. Without the movement the fluidity of water enables there would be a lot of very slow things in existence.
*
It wasn’t long before the spiders started showing themselves. Sometimes just as a speck on a thread hanging from the branches or ceilings. Often on the leaves where the little flyers landed. Now they are big enough to get noticed all about. As it is with all things, following the resources for survival, the population burgeons and gets fat on the bounty.
There is a cost too. You will often see a spider with a leg or two missing. Everything costs something.
*
They have favoured places, spiders, depending on their kind. Or so it seems. Some love to weave their webs across the canyons of green and shadow and need a flow through of air to carry their prey to them, or they set up their webs in sheltered places and wait for other creatures that seek out the shelter. Some hunt in open spaces for their keen eyesight, like the big eyed Jumper, and others take to the jungle for their sensitivity of touch and the network of threads they lay around a place to feel from, like the spiky Lynx.
It only takes a little time observing nature to realise there is an intelligence to the way of things. All things have a place, even if it kills them. Because it’s the way of things.
Everything dies, and it fits.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Wild Things
Gecko. Lives around the house and eats everything in sight or flight around the light at night. It rhymes.
Huntsman. Found under the peeling bark of a tree in the nearby forest/NR. Known as the giant crab spider, young and fast.
Wasp. (can’t remember name now) Was depositing eggs? in rotten old branch in same NR when the ant came to investigate.
Lynx Spider. Waiting on some wild growing Jasmine, such a sweet smell. You have to be careful smelling the flowers.
Honey Bee. Last of the day and I saw this one moving on the ground. It was weak, trying to scramble up on a leaf with its wings outstretched. Death wasn’t far off.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Gecko. Lives around the house and eats everything in sight or flight around the light at night. It rhymes.
Huntsman. Found under the peeling bark of a tree in the nearby forest/NR. Known as the giant crab spider, young and fast.
Wasp. (can’t remember name now) Was depositing eggs? in rotten old branch in same NR when the ant came to investigate.
Lynx Spider. Waiting on some wild growing Jasmine, such a sweet smell. You have to be careful smelling the flowers.
Honey Bee. Last of the day and I saw this one moving on the ground. It was weak, trying to scramble up on a leaf with its wings outstretched. Death wasn’t far off.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Time Comes to Die
Long slender avenue of green, thorny red devil, wings asheen.
Came out of the darkness, the shadowy green.
Antennae a waving, this way and that.
Big black mandibles closing, on what?
The disc of an eye protruding to see.
No one else there but me.
*
Up and down she went. On that dark avenue of green in the sky.
In her hunt for what I don’t know. She awakened to me and not I.
A looking confused for no reason. Would come to her action in time.
I left her a little of sweetness. She never would know it be mine.
*
I love the small things from the darkness so deep.
I love their colours and mine.
I love the shape that god made them.
I love the touch that is Thine.
*
Out of the blackness you touch me. Into the blackness of me.
I have so little to give Thee. But do take it all, it is free.
Come to the life you have made me. Take from me all that I be.
When time comes to die, all I can say is …
… I see.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Life Cycles …
… Beautifully.
When I first came back to Brisbane I found in the local remnant rainforest a thorny leafed plant that had flowers much like a Hibiscus. Big showy white flowers with a big dark red heart and tall stamen reaching for the sky that attracted many small flies and beetles so that you could say this is where life starts for these little creatures.
There was also one, just one, big red and blue beetle on that plant. It was beautiful, and it was shy, running away every chance it got.
I was in this forest yesterday and saw the same plant was flowering again with those big white flowers and stopped to look into the dark red heart of it. There were all the little flies and bugs milling around and soon enough I found the big red and blue fella, not far away.
Wonderful nature, what a blast, of sense.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Look After …
… the little things and the big things take care of themselves. There is truth in old sayings and no less this one. If you clean your feet or teeth your body has a better chance of health than if you don’t. Check the tyre pressure and save on tyres and fuel, maybe accident.
Be careful what you think and life unfolds accordingly.
The big picture is painted with lots of dots.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Day …
… you no longer see me …
Or me.
Me too.
And me.
Me, me.
And here.
And meeee! Me, me, me, me!
Oi! Me too!
And meeeeeeee!
… is the day the pain from having shot yourself in the foot arrives in your consciousness. Then it’s too late for this time round. If you are quick you might see pain has a value. A spiritual value.
It serves the one and only purpose, to wake me up.
Ding, ding, ding! Hear it?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Lord in Blue
Such an insignificant creature? Not at all. Every thing in creation has its perfect place. The only imperfection is in the mind that perceives one, or holds to what is past, what is not now. The creation is now, as close as it gets. In sense.
While the arguments rage as to whether there is a god let’s look at the obvious beauty of the creation as it is. This shot is of a Longhorn Beetle as it happens in the wild near where I live in SE Brisbane. It is undeniable this is a beautiful creature, it touches a point in the psyche where you can recognise a sense that goes; Mmmm! That’s good, that’s nice.
Without knowing exactly what ‘that’ is. Because ‘it’ is not the insect form, but what it represents, the beauty or inscrutable genius behind it.
There is no manipulation here, as I said, this is how the beetle appeared to me. God like? Why not? To me.
Simply sense.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Strange Fly
Three times I have come back from a walk in the bush and had to quickly snatch one of these creatures off me after feeling it creeping speedily around under my shirt. It felt more like a crawler and I was surprised to see a fly when it hit the table.
First time I tried to put a glass on it but it just made it out from under, getting caught at the rim but uninjured, was very tough. Second time I was ready and got the glass on it and pushed a dead leaf with some honey on it under but it wasn’t interested, it just got itself sticky so I had to eventually wash it off before letting it go.
It doesn’t stand up like other flies, it squats close and creeps sideways and all ways. Nor does it have a back body section of any size. It would be about one cm long, black and glossy to the eye.
Nature is always presenting something new in my experience. Amazing nature.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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