Photography by Rich Gigli
Cooks Falls, N.Y.
Spring Embrace – (Gigli 1997)
Silent colors of spring
the eye can not hear.
Pinions of birds in flight
the ear can not see.
Boundless sky radiant
the hand can not touch.
Oh ancient beauty in your fleeting moments awaken
rest upon the withered soul embrace.
Photography by Rich Gigli
Flight of the Bumble Bee
The Bee
By Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886)
Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry
Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.
His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!
Photography by Rich Gigli
Branch Brook Park, Newark, N.J.
‘Woman seated under a cherry blossom tree’ – by Kuniyoshi Utagawa (1797-1861)
The Japanese beauty of Edo
she sat delicate in the garden;
she observed the cherry blossoms:
the beauty
the stillness
the quiet and
the blossoms faded almost days after
and the beauty –
O she too followed the way
of the blossoms;
and here I am ages after
and I long for the beauty
impossible to touch
and who sat in the garden
Photography by Rich Gigli
Horton Brook, New York
Spring Carol by Robert Louis Stevenson
WHEN loud by landside streamlets gush,
And clear in the greenwood quires the thrush,
With sun on the meadows
And songs in the shadows
Comes again to me
The gift of the tongues of the lea,
The gift of the tongues of meadows.
Photography by Rich Gigli
Potato Fields, P.E.I.
The Incas called the potato “papas,” as they do today. Following is the Inca prayer that historians say they used to worship them.
“O Creator! Thou who givest life to all things and hast made men that they may live, and multiply. Multiply also the fruits of the earth, the potatoes and other food that thou hast made, that men may not suffer from hunger and misery.”
Photography by Rich Gigli
Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower, the whole of
the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth
of the blossom:
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
– Zenkei Shibayama- (Rinzai Zen Master 1894 – 1974)
Photography by Rich Gigli
Solitude
And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood,
And I am very happy, for I know that I’ve been good.
My bed is waiting cool and fresh, with linen smooth and fair,
And I must be off to sleepsin-by, and not forget my prayer.
I know that, till to-morrow I shall see the sun arise,
No ugly dream shall fright my mind, no ugly sight my eyes.
But slumber hold me tightly till I waken in the dawn,
And hear the thrushes singing in the lilacs round the lawn.
Photography by Rich Gigli
Winter at Coney Island
Coney Island
Why did you bring me here?
The sand is white with snow,
Over the wooden domes
The winter sea-winds blow–
There is no shelter near,
Come, let us go.
With foam of icy lace
The sea creeps up the sand,
The wind is like a hand
That strikes us in the face.
Doors that June set a-swing
Are bolted long ago;
We try them uselessly–
Alas there cannot be
For us a second spring;
Come, let us go.
Sara Teasdale – 1884 – 1933
Photography by Rich Gigli
Solitude
William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939.
“And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”
Photography by Rich Gigli
High Point Monument
Chief Seattle, died June 7, 1866
‘How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.”