Coloured Light
Walking the garden at night with a torch, to see what shows, here and there a little reflective colour glows.
Holding on upside down, a precarious perch, for you or for me, nowhere to go but for certain, of thought it is free.
And after the flash fired and lit up the night, again and again, I went to bed, everything to me was all right.
When from my darkened sleep I went, there she still was, as the sun rose, the night rent, holding a silent pose.
The colour did burst anew, yellow rose, or sun, who knows, hit the flash again for a few.
Then, as the work done was my best, I thought I would give it a rest.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Our Leonine Nature
Water, one of life’s simple pleasures. The sense, or essence, of it …
Bees, what would we do without them. I have heard people use feather dusters in some places where the bees have died out, to pollinate the crop.
These are a healthy lot too, looking strong and well groomed. Lion-like with their big manes – is what they remind me of.
That they are feral, gone wild in a local forest, might be significant to their health. Having nobody exploiting them.
No doubt they have their difficulties but they can always be seen to take clean water from near the flow.
Never doubting their common purpose or function, as bees.
Being free of our questionable chemistry.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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Pretty On Pink
A Green Shield Bug flits from place to place around the garden. If it doesn’t find what it wants in one place off it goes to another. But what does a bug want? Food, shelter and a mate, what else …
It doesn’t know to want anything it doesn’t need. Could it possibly just enjoy the colour in the sunshine, playing in the garden. As many other garden dwellers can be seen or seem to do.
Is there any conscious self awareness in a bug, or is it an instinctive organic robot. Maybe a messenger of a greater intelligence, the earth perhaps.
And anything born has the potential of its mother, and more.
Let’s not dismiss the little things.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click a picture for a closer look
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A Shooting Star
Click the picture for a bigger version.
A crop of above, for the unbelievers … :-)
Was this Jewel Bug blessed by a shooting star, or was it the photographer or the reader of this, or was it the earth it passed over? Does it matter … all that perceive are affected, by the perceived and the perception, nothing stays the same after the cosmic touch. It matters …
In ancient days, when we were less rigidly rational and perhaps more intuitively romantic, we saw significance in small things. The flight of a bird, the twist of a gust of wind or a falling star. Everything has meaning if you can read it, and it helps to know what others have seen.
What it means is subjective, personal, a matter of context. Such things as shooting stars are universal and as old as the sky above our heads and their meaning has been intuited in various ways, divined in a mind as clear and magnificent as the night sky. Your mind …
So reading the universal is aided and coloured by the context of the reader. I looked up where in our culture the shooting star has occurred and the instance that spoke was this : ‘And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.’
Looking down, or up, within, see that ancient sky and all it contains now, as clear as mind can be. … are you a shooting star burning up with a flash of mystical purpose, or a rational meteorite.
Mystical purpose is a burning meteor, you wouldn’t know it to look at.
Cosmic symbolism in the ordinary life … nothing too serious.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Dragon Days
Still, in the heat of the day, overseeing its territory from rest, no less dangerous for that, to the other airborne creatures hereabouts – the vast canyons of bright empty space surrounded by deep wells of dark shadow.
To the Dragon I was invisible, a trick of being, not being anything a Dragon would fear. In the ever moving colour and form of the psyche everything is connected, and when ‘the time is right’ one thing knows another, inside.
The smaller the creature, the more distant the relationship, the less direct or immediate the connection. But the Dragon knew me, like Dragon knows Dragon, nothing to reflect on. Nothing to resist, no separation.
In being. In form it’s another matter, everything going its own way, clashing and thrashing, killing and dying, as some thing, Dragon or man.
The trick, or knack, is to slow down enough inside to slip into nowhere, as no-thing, at will, and still function some where, as some thing, outside.
A life’s work, for a man. Dragon does it naturally.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Things That Fly …
Zebra Bee. Ok, not really. A native resting on a cold afternoon.
An unusual fly warming up by the light at night.
Too cold to fly away, resting on the grass.
Racing Red and blue/black winged Wasp.
Long legged fly enjoying the rotting fruit.
Red Assassin Bug, hunting on the flowers other creatures eat.
Bee echo …
Assassin nymph chasing native bee.
Hoverfly in the spiders grasp. Bye, bye fly.
Mating time for the ants.
Doli fly in the afternoon.
Honey Bee meets Spider, usually ends bad for the bee – which is good for the spider.
Mighty wasp. She was seeking nesting sites around the ants feasting on fruit.
Asleep in the field, not far to travel for breakfast.
Things that get overlooked, in the garden or field and on the computer. There are so many images of encounters that are never seen but once.
It may serve as a reminder of the unique character of the individuals within the one amazing nature, everything with a place.
Nothing remains the same, even when change is imperceptibly incremental the movement is always towards ‘better’.
As long as we don’t give in to the dark side, and even that serves, has its place.
And time runs out, things die, nothing remains to change.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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The Hunter
The same day I found The Huntress I found her male counterpart, in much the same way, by searching the places I would hide during the day if … I were a night hunter.
I took the loosened bark down from the side of the tree and turned it gently but quickly as it came away so whatever might be on the other side became visible and exposed, perhaps triggering a freeze response and not flight or fright. There, sitting stock still, was a huge male Huntsman.
I didn’t know how long I had before he took off so I set to photographing him from the available angles, his back to the tree, where else – not to expose him unnecessarily, it’s a balance of forces applied.
And after a minute or so shooting, just as I took my eye off him to adjust something for no more than a second or two, he was gone, deftly disappearing back into the hideaway that is the debris at the foot of his tall tree.
His tree is about 50 metres from her tree, a world away it seems, but there is no reason to believe they didn’t meet.
Little things have their ways.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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The Huntress
In the nearby remnant rainforest there is still sign of insect life. In fact it never really goes away, just hides out from our winter’s cold, and other dangers.
So, hiding as they are these days, the obvious thing to do is seek – and ye shall find, seeking? Not this time, this time I found two magnificent members of the Huntsman tribe.
One female and the other male, in similar places on different trees, hiding behind the loosening bark that the gum trees drop every year. Even trees shed the old to be new.
As I carefully removed a section of loose bark she was alarmed at the intrusion. She ran rapidly up and down the piece of bark once and I thought she was going to do a classic and run up my arm, but she quickly found and settled into the only safe and defensible nook available and went statue still. A protected position from where she was only partially visible and could see any approaching danger – me.
But I was no danger to her, I placed the bark down on the leaf litter, careful not to knock it on anything so she wouldn’t be frightened and bolt. Keeping my movements slow and deliberate I got the camera assembled and moved in for the shoot, what was presented.
This is the female Huntsman, Huntress. A magnificent creature, as impressive as any of the massive familiar animals. And beautiful, with streaked silver hair cradling her eight simple black eyes, massive death dealing fangs and armour spiked to secure prey or repel attackers.
God made thing. From the inscrutable formlessness embracing and upholding all things, a Queen in spider form.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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The Invitation …
Everything, by it’s presence, is an invitation. To what, then, is the question. That depends on its intent and your predisposition.
In this case intent is inoffensive. So, to capture an image of a resting Potter Wasp.
Or its significance is something unseen.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click the pix for a closer look
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Nature's Place 
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