Author: Maria Johnson

a little motion in the ocean

I cheated on this week’s challenge to capture motion. I went to the beach last weekend with high hopes of getting some good photography in — gotta get my 10,000 hours in this fledgling hobby of mine! Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate. I got a few good stills that I liked and included here, but overall it was overcast and stormy most of the time. I tried to get some birds in  flight not doing the usual — flying. I got one eating a little fish that a fisherman threw to him. He had to wait for the tail to quit flailing before he swallowed it, and a gull that landed, its wings still stretched out.

One of the things that delights me about this beach happens twice a day. Pods of porpoises swim west in the early morning, and return in the later afternoon and swim east. We’re on a peninsula and I think they must be going to the bay west of us to feed.

I’ve never been able to get good pictures. This time, with a better camera in hand, I was caught unaware and missed one of them jumping out of the water like Flipper. I switched to video hoping to catch it again, but all I got was two pods swimming along. That’s plenty of motion for the morning.

Here’s a bonus:

#100Poems: Number17

I sat alone reading a book
In the afternoon Light.

The wind blowing gently
Through the trees
Stirred the new leaves
Into expressing their Joy
As a dance of Shadows
And Sunbeams.

A late afternoon Ballet
Across my lap as I sat
By the open window
Reading my book.

#100Poems: Number14

I parked by the street today —
intent on getting my 10,000 steps.
Or is it 8,000?
It doesn’t matter.
I’m not going to do it anyway.

I let the motor idle with the A/C still running
while a favorite song plays.
My eyes wander over to the man at the bus stop.

He’s old.
Old in that way that reminds me
of weathered sepia-colored prints
from the early 20th century.

His coat is a nondescript brown.
So are his pants.
And he wears a hat. Not a ball cap.
A hat.

He sits patiently. Waiting.
A modern still life in the city.

Suddenly, he reaches down by his feet
where a crack in the sidewalk hosts
a collection of weeds.
He plucks a baby dandelion from the debris,
yellow, and full of life,
and sticks it in his faded lapel.