ant gallery
I may well have just ruined a nuanced and delicate haiku that took me days to write with an obvious visual joke, but I’m not sorry. Designing the badge (an option on Snapseed I’d never previously had a use for) led to a completely new understanding of “recognition.”
These are old carpenter ant galleries exposed on a standing dead tree as the cambium rots off.
the upward mobility
of water
Plummer’s Hollow, where I live, is cut into the northeast end of Brush Mountain, a typical long, low ridge in the folded Appalachians, raised above the valleys by differential erosion (and also shaped by periglacial processes during the Ice Ages). It would perhaps make more logical sense to talk of water’s downward mobility, but you know, I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.
Photo taken from my front porch yesterday morning after the latest snowfall. I’m not sure what the name of this Snapseed font is, but it’s perfect for achieving legibility against a busy background.
mud dauber nests
Just spotted this at the back of the garage when I put away the car this afternoon. How had I missed it before? Such gorgeous architecture. I’m not entirely sure what I had in mind with the words but they felt right, and sometimes that’s enough.
converting my loneliness
to metric
The best ones happen when I turn off the analytical side of my brain. Like, given the subject matter, why not choose a font that’s all sciencey? Why does it look better with a calligraphic font (La Guapita in GIMP)?
As for the photo, I’m a morning-shower kind of guy. And also, apparently, a caveman.
rodent teeth find
something to gnaw
Ordinarily I’d have gone with “finding” but changed it to fit the newspaper headline and sub-heading style. That came toward the end of two days (appropriately enough) of fiddling around with various textual and font possibilities. Out-takes included “two-day snowstorm my solitude growing voluptuous” and “two-day snowstorm the sudden snap of a mousetrap”.
The fonts are Perpetua Titling MT Bold and Gauge Oblique (which to my eye is indistinguishable from Gauge Italic, but what do I know).
that photo-negative sun
when I close my eyes
When the pun is this unsubtle, it’s definitely a senryu. Stock-market volatility and a neighbor’s ramshackle deer stand inspired this, as did a lifetime’s fascination with afterimages and yes, last night’s almost full moon going in and out of the clouds.
a vole’s
wandering hill
fresh snow already a vole’s winding hill
fresh snow moving hill full of vole
that emphatic
WHO-all
to track up my snow
mourning dove wings
dead broomsedge hissing
in the ridgetop wind
