Kooki Kool
Recently a family of Kookaburra’s moved into the neighbourhood, maybe driven by the extraordinary weather and lack of food in their usual habitat. There have been so few insects in the local wild places, as I noted in other posts.
At first they were laughing a lot, as Kooki’s do, and hanging out for a feed. Wherever I went in the garden there they would be, looking at me, sometimes laughing, sometimes ‘asking’ for food – in their way. One day all three came to the balcony and sat for a few pictures, a pleasure for me.
Fresh meat is their thing and with no insects it was mince from my dear and generous neighbour’s fridge, of course I paid my share. Then, after a while, they settled into the area and didn’t ask for food so much. I think they must have found someone nearby to feed them regularly, good for them.
*
There is something magical about birds. In the fact of things, wherever you go there you will find a bird. They are everywhere and they see everything, at least more than anything else on the planet. I believe they are known in various cultures as the messengers of the Gods and I can see why, amongst all the creatures they so obviously fly. Magical indeed.
It’s not just in the fact of things that they are respected and even revered, for their form and function, colour and song, their beauty. But in the truth of things, what is behind the fact, they are the ‘messages’ of the Gods. Their forms – of fact – the bringers of that message.
When it happens to you, you will know what the message is, because it is already in you. The sound and sight of a bird will point to it. The thing is not to ignore it since it is from the ‘gods’ and serves the greater purpose of life on earth.
To wake up, to the being of a sunbeam, from the dream of past and future that is the human mind today.
*
Walking in the woods the last few days I have been touched by many of our little friends, some yellow backs flashing as they passed swiftly by, some crimson heads bobbing around the bush in front, the royal blue of the long tailed tit, and such high pitched songs that were often bordering on the range of hearing, and all the usual characters heard and sighted in the shadows of the green, coming and going, to me and away.
All in concert, a single song, of the love of where I come from.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
*
Hello Doli
There are a few wells in my area that most never get to see, they are all out of the way of normal traffic. I like to look into these wells, the pull of the mystery I suppose, a little exploration to see what’s there. Some are shallow and are choked with sticks and fallen leaves. Others are deeper but still choked up. So I can’t do what I want to do and toss a pebble in to hear what sound it makes when it hits bottom, there’d be no point.
There is another well but it has long been behind locked gates and I don’t climb like I used to, so I threw a stone over but there was no sound or echo came back. And I’m not so driven any more, focused – you could say, to risk breaking in to what is clearly closed to me.
But I never say never, so you never know … And there might be a well I haven’t found yet.
We have just passed the shortest day here in the southern hemisphere, winter. Not much in the field or garden, especially after such a wet year and cold month. Still, something shows up on an almost daily basis, as long as I look. A Doli fly, 5mm long and skittish.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Rescue! Rescue!
I am going to tell you a dream that many little boys have. Of floods, endless rain, everything drowning, and a friend comes to help. A reminder of another time.
He can’t remember being a child. And then he remembers being a child and looking into a mirror and seeing his mum in need of rescue, and he spent the rest of his life rescuing his mum – in some woman, a self perpetuating mechanism, it’s classic I’m sure.
‘This is the boy’s love of mother distorted in the pain of a child that couldn’t help his mum when he saw she needed it. And the boy lived a sad life, to say the least.’ Because he always found what he expected to find, he couldn’t help it – the imprint on the film in the projector frames the light.
And then she, some ‘woman’ from outside the projection, came one night and loved the pain out of the boy in a dream turning to a nightmare. It was the opposite or negation of a nightmare, to have love enter so. What a wonder that is. And when he was falling back into the nightmare she came again and called out Rescue!; a gentle call, and rescued him again.
This is what love does, it stops the pain, the nightmare, by invoking love – the willingness to give up the nightmarish projection. ‘So just love her man, it wasn’t her fault you couldn’t rescue her. Just love her. Whoever ‘she’ is.’
And only ‘she’ can stop it. And who is she? Only you know, and she is the one you’re with. And she is the one to come, to the rescue. ((:
Love is the rescue, the rescuer and the rescued.
And this little Potter Wasp lady warmed up on my finger and took a little honey to start the day with and flew away. ((:
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
*
Potter Wasp – the Nomad’s Neighbour
In the field of bees there are a few wasps that sleep at nights. Called Potters, because they make wonderful nest structures from mud. They usually roost in solitude in the long grass but occasionally can be found in twos or threes, and rarely next to a Nomad.
Like most creatures they are easily intruded upon but I have also found them to be gentle by nature, disinclined to aggression. Content to climb on a warm finger on a cold and wet morning.
They are also beautiful to look at with their wonderful colouring and strangely elegant form.
One of nature’s pleasures, to me. Living art.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
A Little Purple
In all the rain and cloud of late a little colour calls in the forest. It only lives in one place, about three plants in all. I have no idea what it is called but it is a beauty and this day gave itself up nicely, I think.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
*
Sunrise on Dew Laden Nomad and Friends …
… in the Wildness.
Cold nights and humid air with warm sunshine in the morning means something to drink and life goes on, if you’re lucky and survive the day, if luck it be. All the creatures are making the most of the light and warmth at sunrise. I would too if I was sleeping on a leaf, though I think I might hang under it and brave the spiders rather then carry all that cold water on my back.
Well, I was this side of the camera so I don’t have those considerations today. ((:
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
*
The Texture and Colour of Life …
… in …
… the sweet peace of the black.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Dreams of Bees
As the still bright sun goes down behind the clouds over the woods on a cold and windy day, a Blue Banded Bee gets ready for the long dark night through which he cannot fly away. For a while he comes and he goes but eventually to keep, he locks his jaws on the stem and that way goes to sleep.
And on the way he dreams of the things, of bees. While stretching his wings and kicking his legs he turns this way and that to indicate, he sees. The blue of a flower in bloom, a little nectar or pollen, a mate of his kind. Zooming in and out among the grasses and between the trees. God knows he will find.
Dreaming in imagery a thinker could never know, the things a bee is and does. Making his home near enough to his kind, making it on the go.
And all the while, he keeps his big eyes open for danger and, marvelously, knows no foe.
*
She, in her clay nest looking over her brood, waiting to wake to the sun once more to do the dreams of bees, given the weather’s mood. To find a blue flower, some pollen and nectar, a mate perhaps, of her kind, a choiceless love that does not intrude.
She knows no time but what she does as the need presents in mind. Yes, bees have minds. Did you think you are the only ones, you and your kind?
And when they are done and dead, no one to mourn, the little ones fed, it happens o’er, never once knowing the ill of human dread.
Rise up little one, to the golden flight, though there be a little fright, Thou art a queen, of light.
Rise up, to know your right.
*
Each bee new to the fact of being a bee, each flower a rare discovery, sipping the nectar of the earth can only be heavenly, to a new bee. And all the other things that happen anew in a bee’s busy day, you see.
Chased by a Dragon or Wasp or even a bird or three. Evading death a hundred ways, the wind no less a threat, when hungry, being as small a bee.
They have been cold and wet of late. Holding on for days and nights before they ate. To live and die as is their fate. And all to know a mate, a mate.
That’s their fate, and their faith, it’s never too late.
*
And then I look up and what do I see, but the gods of the sub-continent aligned to a V. Sailing or running along on the wind, aflame, a-coloured, gloriously unhinged. What may be.
Was it me? With them or not, I can’t now see. A b… on the wing, I could equally be. ((:
What is this I have seen? The passage overhead, alongside, of fantastic creatures, warriors, a king and a queen. A wonderful procession of the characters of innocent mythical mind a keen.
Then to my rear I see the world, a-burning where there is no flame, consuming yellow arise from the earth, a perfect dissolution that knows no blame – it’s not you or me, no such fame.
This way or that, there was no escape, from these hard won laurels no man could possibly ape. T’was real enough, to me, all form agape.
The end I see, nothing to bemoan, but to set me free. The death of you and me, but no, not Thee.
Or was it just a dream after all, of bees, no more to be seen or fall? A dream, too few do recall.
No, t’was real enough to me, my friend. Know though, this is not the end.
For we meet in the wilderness, of mind, where thought would only offend.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
*
Nature's Place 
23 comments