TRIUMPH OF SPIRIT IN LOVE, NATURE & ART

Music of Nature

The Beauty of Humility


Clapsed in prayer

Unfolding in silence

Bowing down to the Creator

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Welcome to samples of my work in various art forms showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.”  “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness.


Dedicated with Gratitude to Didi of Didi’s Art Design


Didi, A selection of my favorite photos of upstate New York State and Delhi and other places in India to thank you for your time and effort and wishes and prayers… Love, Ellen

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Autumn in the Quarry in Millbrook, NY


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Autumn Next Door in Millbrook, NY

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Autumn in our Front Yard, Millbrook, NY

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Bontecou Lake in Autumn


Millbrook, New York

This landscape no longer exists. Cut down for hunters. 😢


Autumn Memories


Millbrook, NY “Cool Change” by Little River Band

My Cathedral


Another reblog…

MOONSIDE

The wilderness
is my cathedral
Spring Trees at Sunset  (digital photo)
The sky
my steeple
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The trees
my buttresses
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Hay bales
my statuary
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Flowers
my stained glass
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A babbling brook
my organ
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Frogs and toads
my choir
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Fields of wildflowers
my incense
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Thunder storms
my high mass
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A very diverse congregation…

From cows

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to snails and turtles

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to gazillions
of insects

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Deer sometimes come round

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Butterflies abound

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Moths, too

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Birds of every hue

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All that’s missing is you

but you worship your own way

doing charity every day

more than I can say

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The Spirit of Snow


The Spirit of snow

highlights the love of line

the loving grace of trees in winter

bare and spiritual

the horses a gift of color

in otherwise black and white


What the Trees Say


Feather trees whisper a blessed new year to you all!


Circle of Life



Spirit in Summer


Summer spirit

whispers to

the lowly weeds

dances round

the graceful trees

and sends peace

to pacify

an observant cow

 

 


Fall Teardrops



Whispers of Spring


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Spring green and faint yellow

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Sap flowing amid stone and evergreens

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A burst of red

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Cows heading past lone bare tree

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The hide-out of the Spring Peepers

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Layers of Spring texture

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Greening grass at end of day


Spring Seraphic Singing


It is late afternoon and spring by the calendar, although still quite cool.  I have just spent some time at our neighbor’s pond, listening to a form of music that some have likened to the sound to bells.  Others liken it to bird song. And still others with unimaginable disdain, to “some kind of nature noise.”  For me it is one of the happiest of sounds– the act of creation transformed into sound decibels for all to hear.  A sound that comes from the earth and resounds to the heavens, unwittingly praising the Almighty.   It is a form of ecstasy when the sound surrounds me totally, filling my ears every evening with perhaps the single-most highlight of spring for me– the siren song of the Spring Peepers counterbalanced by the deeper sound of wood frogs.

How have they cast their spell over so many?   I cannot say except that their song is uplifting and filled with hope despite the natural perils they face daily.  For, as true of all of us, they may die at any moment– say as a meal for a nearby perching crow or underneath murky waters eaten by a snapping turtle.  They call for a mate without ceasing, without fear, single-mindedly, without a thought for their own safety.  This is nature at her most elemental, in her most singular scope.  The peepers all sing out vying to be heard– an a cappella choir of voices.  In some spots, I am told, their song is deafening.  How nice to be there; I cannot get enough of their sweet music.  It moves me to tears– these tiny creatures singing out their heart’s desire.

As I return home to family “situations” and domestic duties, I yearn for the simplicity and total fervor of their song.  For if they sing then all is “right” in at least that small part of the world.  Progress has not paved over their pond.  Disdainful humans have not drained a “vernal pool.”  David M. Carroll writes about vernal pools in his books on turtles called The Swampwalker’s Journal.  As the title suggests, Carroll walks such places in search of turtles and other amphibians.  He defines a vernal pool as a pool of water that fills up in Fall and Winter, swells in the Spring and often dries up by end of Summer.  But a vernal pool is utmost a place of magic, not only where turtles lurk, but where mating frogs deposit gelatinous eggs which turn into tadpoles first, and there, later become frogs.  And after a requisite series of warm days, followed by spring rains, on the first dark night, vernal pools become the site of the “salamander night.”  Salamanders leave their hibernacula to go for a night of endless mating and then return to leaf litter in the woods to disappear for the rest of the year.  Some people who know nothing of vernal pools and their function deem them a nuisance, a big puddle to be filled in or drained.  Some people know little of spring peepers and wood frogs except that they are “noisy,” “like some sort of insect.”  Poor insects are made out to be the pesky lowest of the low. The natural symphony of hormonal, harmonic sounds sometimes falls on deaf ears.

After finishing my evening chores, I try reading, but find the haunting sound of the spring peepers and wood frogs digging deep within my psyche, making me restless, wishing to be part of that pond, surrounded on all sides by the sex song, inebriated with the unbridled joy in the air, submerged in the utter power of nature manifesting in one of her gentler forms.  For the song of the Spring Peepers nature celebrates life-to-be rather than the taking-away of life.  Most of all, the song of the Spring Peepers is a song of tremendous faith, faith in love, faith that love will propagate, and faith that new life will emerge.

Spring Trees at Sunset  (digital photo)


New Life, Old Love


 

 

Tree skeletons

acquire accoutrements

each passing day

pale green regalia

not the deep green

of Summer when the

change in color

is so gradual

as to be imperceptible

nor the fleeting riot

of color of Fall

no, in Spring,

ephemeral  evanescent

slight light green

appears by the moment

right before my slow eyes

as I discern

shadows in the woods

a flash of white tail

deer fleet of foot

fly through the brush

dancing to the deep trill

of the wood frogs and

the echoing, haunted cries

of pileated woodpeckers

in the sudden density

of the fast-growing woods

inside the booming forest

whilst where I sit

at the edge of wood

bumble bees hum

and magically lift off

the teaming ground

and fly to the sky

where birds sing to mates

sweet songs of desire

in a crescendo of new life

as you have sung to me

for nearly thirty years

in an ever-changing

ever-growing love

whilst a breeze caresses

a newborn leaf

that tingles to its touch

as I thrill so very much

to the searching clasp

of your hand in mine

(As yet another killer, this time on the campus of Santa Barbara, California,  is identified as possibly having Asperger’s syndrome, I, as a Bipolar Aspie, offer this poem written to my Aspie husband for May 14, 2014, on the occasion of our 25th wedding anniversary, to show that not all people with Asperger’s reach for a gun and are violent.)


Symphonic Days, Tympanic Nights


Trees have fully blossomed

the clouds are fluffy white

a glory day

Trees were starkly bare

the beginning of the same week

the night pregnant with frog


The Hum of Life


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The reverberations of love

jump across time and space

to another receptive heart

*

The reverberations of suffering

resound around the earth

picked up by open souls in prayer

*

The reverberations of Aum

most sacred of sounds

pulses through our minds in meditation

*

Love brings the possibility of loss

Suffering brings a totality of pain

Aum brings the reality of God within


“The Rites of Spring”


 Sap a flowin’

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 Ice a goin’

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Frogs a croakin’

P1130043_edited-1Turtles snorin’


How Wolves Change Rivers



An Insecure Security


Gemutlichkeit* of

a rainy October morning

dry chilly warmth

in our little barn

*

downstairs

you perusing the paper

 upstairs

me pumping poetry

*

rain tip-toeing

on the metal roof

a tymphanic symphony

outside the window

a masterpiece of color

yellow walnut leaves

and red sugar maple

the steady drip-drop of water

*

what bliss is this

precious moments of Now

a heavenly haven

from a frightening, tipsy-turvy world

*

I wish to always be

in your aura of calm

and the beauteous bounty of Nature

but

for sure

death will come

*

 please take us together

and

find us in each other’s arms

*

blessed bliss

pure peace

and

true security

the everlasting Now

only exist

in the presence of God.

*German word meaning “coziness”.


Angelic Choirs of…. Crickets


The Angelic Secret of Crickets