Art Challenge...post one a day!

Today I've posted an edited photo taken as part of a series when we went to find Derek Jarman's cottage on the shingle in Dungeness.

"The Abandoned Boat"

What an amazing place...a wilderness of stone and sea...yet full of life with such banks of marine wild flowers and a glimpse of a hare running away from his cottage.

I may never get a chance to return...but the memories are strong and quite a bit of poetry resulted from that visit.

"The Abandoned Boat"

Wild flowers on the shingle.

 The emptiness of the landscape.

Rusting metal everywhere hidden in the maran grasses.

Sculptural rusting metals...abandoned.

Beloved Poem

Davina Murphy-Gibb

The Crop Of Stones

Were they the ruins of some forgotten monastery

laid to it's rest by Henry's henchmen

or the remains of Druidic calendar

and temple of rites?

No, they are the sacred symbols

of inhuman labour

expended to create arable lands.

The toil of a grandfather's tribe,

A crop of stones dug up with broken spade.

Raked out with iron hoes,

Clawed over with blistered hands.

A man's blood leaking sacrificial homage

to unseen gods.

For in Mayo

the first three crops are stones.

Her fertility hidden under barren veils of

Pebbles

that fit in the palm

Rocks

the size of fists and

Boulders

to break the back.

Layer upon layer.

a penance undergone for a rich man's wealth,

a poor man's pride.

Gone are the portals of history

that upheld crumbling alters,

mere rubble now of abandoned ages.

A crop of stones.

The first harvest will be corn

and the second barley

the third may be rye

but the fruits of a man's patience will be tried,

for in Mayo

The first three crops are stones.

photo taken in the far west of Ireland.