slow burning ember

 

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”

 

~ Robert Frost ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from a photo taken in May 2023.

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© 2023 nightpoet – all rights reserved

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house and garden

 

“She has a house and garden,

   I would like to see what happens…”

 

~ Jim Morrison ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from a photo taken in May 2023.

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© 2023 nightpoet – all rights reserved

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bisous

 

“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”

 

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from a photo of lipstick kisses left on Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris in August 2015.

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© 2022 nightpoet – all rights reserved

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a study of hands

 

“My life is light, waiting for the death wind,

Like a feather on the back of my hand.”

 

~ T. S. Eliot ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from a photo of Picasso’s Étude des Mains (Study Of Hands) painted in Paris in the spring of 1921 taken in le Musée national Picasso–Paris in May 2015.

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© 2022 nightpoet – all rights reserved

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TALK TALK

 

“Many talk as easily as they breathe,

and with quite as little thought.”

 

~ James Lendall Basford ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from a photo of street art on a preserved section of the Berlin Wall taken in Berlin in January 2018.

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© 2021 nightpoet – all rights reserved

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BLACK BILE

 

“The taste of your life depends on the spices you used to brew it.”

 

~ Israelmore Ayivor ~

 

continued

Digitally enhanced image created from a photo taken in Paris in June 2018.

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© 2020 nightpoet all rights reserved

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TALK TALK

 

“Many talk as easily as they breathe,

and with quite as little thought.”

 

~ James Lendall Basford ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo of street art on a preserved section of the Berlin Wall taken in Berlin in January 2018.

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© 2018 nightpoet all rights reserved

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OLD DEAD DOG

 

“One does not just excavate

buried objects or situations,

the true archaeologist also excavates

long lost feelings and emotions.”

 

~ nightpoet ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in March 2018.

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© 2018 nightpoet all rights reserved

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BISOUS

 

“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”

 

~  Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo of lipstick kisses left on Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris in August 2015.

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© 2018 nightpoet all rights reserved

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THE FOOL

 

“I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.”

 

~ Mark Twain ~

 

Image of the Tarot card “The Fool” downloaded from the internet in July 2017.

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© 2017 nightpoet all rights reserved

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ROZ VEN

 

“A thousand Dreams within me softly burn.”

 

~ Arthur Rimbaud ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in my garden in July 2004.

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© 2017 nightpoet all rights reserved

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HOUSE AND GARDEN

 

“She has a house and garden,

I would like to see what happens…”

 

~ Jim Morrison ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken in April 2013.

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© 2017 nightpoet all rights reserved

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DESCARTES’ DOG

 

“I think dogs are the most amazing creatures;

they give unconditional love.

For me, they are the role model for being alive.”

 

~ Gilda Radner ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken on the Rue Descartes in Paris in September 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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DEADDOGSEYES

 

“A dog’s spirit dies hard.”

 

~ Mikhail Bulgakov ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from two original photos, one taken in December 2009, the other in September 2015.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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LE CIMETIÈRE DES CHIENS

 

“Let sleeping dogs lie.”

 

~ Robert Walpole ~

 

Digitally enhanced image created from an original photo taken at Le Cimetière des Chiens d’Asnières-sur-Seine in Paris in May 2011.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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SKULLDOGGERY

 

…it matters not what we unearth in the course of our research,

each interesting situation, each precious artifact has its tale to tell…

 

Photo of a Roman dog skull, dated to the middle of the first century CE, taken in January 2016.

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© 2016 nightpoet all rights reserved

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JALK

 

JALK

~ October 15th 1999 – October 5th 2011 ~

 

Life is always a coming and going. It is sad losing grandparents and later parents along the way. And later, as we approach our final curtain, we begin to lose our friends. But something else sad occurs in our journey along life’s path. We live longer than our pets, and we have to deal with losing them. Over the years we lose a number of them. It is never easy, and it never gets easier. If anything it’s ten times harder each time. When my parents passed away I grieved deeply. Losing one’s parents is difficult, perhaps even more so when, like me, one is an only child. All your ties with the past are cut forever. All the questions one wanted to ask, all the things one didn’t get a chance to say echo now in the emptiness. But when my faithful German Shepherd passed away four years ago on this date, it was as if a piece of my heart was torn out. Staring into that empty hole is hard. The bitter taste it leaves never quite goes away.

 Jalk was the most intelligent, well-behaved, kind and loving dog I have ever known, and I’ve known many. A dog’s unconditional love and constant companionship is one of life’s most treasured gifts. The girlfriend I had at the time in 2001 rescued Jalk from the Frankfurt airport, where he had been trained as a guard dog. He was a year and a half old and had already been through a lot. Trained at first in Bavaria as a sport dog, he had been abused because apparently he didn’t always want to do what his trainers expected. At the airport too he was mustered out of service because when commanded to jump and grab and hold onto the trainer’s arm, he would sometimes let go. Actually I always thought that he was very smart because it seemed as if he didn’t really want to do that kind of work. He probably would have been shipped to the U.S. had we not intervened.

He was stubborn in the beginning if I commanded him in German (I think he had the memories of his earlier abusive trainers), so I taught him in English and from that point on he obeyed with no problems, no hesitation. We both had a deep trust in one another. He never begged, he never stole food, you could take him anywhere (in Europe people take their dogs in stores, to restaurants, to pet supply stores, just about anywhere except supermarkets, butcher shops and bakeries) and you wouldn’t even know a dog was there he was so quiet and well-behaved. He was a good-sized German Shepherd, large husky men would cross to the other side of the street when they saw us coming. Actually it was funny; because when she took him for walks he protected her completely. But when I went walking with him, he expected me to protect him. I suppose in his eyes I was the alpha dog. I could tell a thousand stories, share so many memories, but here is not the place for that. I just wanted to remember this sad day. He passed away ten days before his twelfth birthday, not a bad age for a Shepherd.

He died peacefully in my arms, on this day four years ago. Not being a believer in any kind of afterlife, I know that I won’t ever scratch his head behind his ears or look into those deep sad brown eyes again, but his memory and the joy that he gave me will stay deep in my thoughts until I too take that last walk into nothingness. Hail and farewell my friend, my life would have been so much less rich and more meaningless without you…

 

 

Photo taken in his garden in 2005.

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© 2015 nightpoet all rights reserved

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AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MOMENT – A PAW PRINT IN TIME

 

A SMALL FANTASY ABOUT SOLDIERS, A DOG AND ROOFING TILES

 

Let’s take a few moments today and take a trip back through time to visit a cohort of Roman soldiers. These soldiers were in an 80 man century of the second cohort and had been assigned to a detail that was responsible for manufacturing roofing shingles, those large heavy red rectangular tiles that covered the roofs of most Roman buildings. Located on the outskirts of the Roman provincial city of Mogontiacum, on the Rhine River, which served as part of the northern Germanic frontier border of the Roman empire, they were working at a series of large kilns in which the tiles would be fired. Off to one side of the kilns, which were built partly under the surface of ground, there were a number of long large wooden shelters. A couple of hundred yards further away there was a slight rise where, in several different trenches, the loam, clay and sand were being dug up and carted off in wheelbarrows. Near the wooden shelters some of the men were mixing the contents of the wheelbarrows, together with water brought from a nearby stream, in large vats to produce the thick material that would be scooped into wooden molds to form the shingles. These would then be carried over to the shelters and laid out in rows to dry before eventually being fired in the ovens. Depending on the weather, they could be left for days or even weeks to dry out. Today was sunny and mild so some of the molds had been laid out in the adjoining fields to dry. As they worked the soldiers chatted and joked with each other.

A large dog from a nearby farm wandered through one of those fields where the tiles were laid out to dry as the soldiers worked. He was looking for a hand out, but not having much luck. He had big paws with long nails. As he sniffed around he stepped on a few of the drying molds, leaving nice fat paw prints in the soft clay. The soldiers didn’t really care, for with the molds left out to dry for such long periods it wasn’t unusual for dogs, cats, goats, children and the occasional adult to wander through leaving their footprints as the stepped on the clay in the forms. The dog, after raising his leg over a few of the molds, lost interest and loped back off across the fields. Neither he nor the soldiers could possibly know that he had created a permanent moment in time when he stepped on one of the drying tiles.

About a week later the tile with his prints was taken and fired in the kiln, set out to cool and then with hundreds of others, loaded onto an oxcart and transported into the city. There it was used in the roof of a building next to one of the main temples. And there it would remain for perhaps some 250 years until the building was torn down or destroyed in the conflict that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. It was then recycled and reused in the wall of another building before the Franks invaded and when later on that building was destroyed the tile was broken into several pieces and scattered about, one of which had the impression of a single paw print preserved on it. It lay unnoticed for hundreds of years in the ground, eventually covered by all the layers of earth and rubble that the passage of history leaves behind it. At some point in the Middle Ages it was dug up and, along with earth, stones and other tile fragments, was used as a foundation filling for a floor level in a church that had been built above the long buried ruins of the Roman temple. That is where, inside the church, it spent hundreds of years, covered up, as human history unfolded, oblivious to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, the numerous petty wars between princes, Napoleon’s occupation of Mayence, conflict between the German states before their eventual unification in the 19th century, the War To End All Wars, the Depression, Hitler’s rise to power, the slaughter of the Jews, the intense bombing and destruction of the city in the last days of World War II, the rebuilding of the burned out church in the 1950’s and the industrial modernization of the last four decades until finally this morning, as I was helping to shovel out a section of the church beneath that old floor level, I picked it up, turned it over, brushed it off and touched the paw print of a dog that lived some 1800 years ago and wandered through where the the Roman soldiers had manufactured their tiles on that sunny day so long ago. Now it will join thousands of other tiles and tile fragments that are being studied and researched by specialists, for they too have an interesting tale to tell and will provide a wealth of information. What a long strange trip it’s been…

 

Photo of the impression of a dog’s paw print in a Roman roofing tile fragment taken on December 11th 2014 shortly after it was found.

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© 2014 nightpoet all rights reserved

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A DOG’S LOVE

 

A parent, a child, a partner, a friend can all take their love away if they so choose. A dog would never even entertain such a thought. Please, as winter sets in and it gets very cold outside, take good care of your dogs and keep them happy, loved and warm…

 

Photo of my German Shepherd taken in November 2002.

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© 2014 nightpoet all rights reserved

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I TOOK A WALK TODAY

THE LOVE AND THE MEMORIES NEVER FADE

 

I took a walk today. It was a beautiful sunny cool fall day. My path led me along an old familiar route that I always had taken when I walked with my dog. I wanted to see how much had changed over the last three years. Not much had. It was a walk through neighbourhoods and across fields and through the woods. One thing was different though. Today my dog, Jalk, was not with me.

Three years ago on this day, just ten days short of his twelfth birthday, my best friend and constant companion passed peacefully into the realm of nothingness. He had been a faithful accompanying partner from the first day he came into my life in July 2001. He was then a year and a half old and had already had quite a chaotic life behind him. But he was a highly intelligent dog who had gone through a very rigid training program as a security guard dog. He obeyed without question or hesitation, was an excellent walker and, like most German Shepherds, had a fairly good stubborn streak. There was never a day in our time together when he didn’t give me all the joy and the love that only a dog can bestow. His leaving left a void that, although it recedes with the passing of the years, will never be filled. It is a shame that nature didn’t grant dogs a longer lifespan. They touch our lives and our hearts all too briefly on our journey through. I will always miss him as anyone misses a wonderful companion. Today, on this day when everything changed, I celebrate his life. The love and the memories never fade…

Jalk. October 15th 1999 – October 5th 2011. The portrait is from a photo taken in the garden I had rented for him to enjoy out on the edge of town in the Autumn of 2006.

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As I was always behind the camera, I took thousands of photos of Jalk over the years. This is one of only two that were taken of him and I together. Photo taken in late Summer 2001.

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This is an early photo of Jalk, still young and slender, just after I got him and before he slowly turned gray over the years along with his owner. Photo taken in Summer 2001.

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© 2014 nightpoet all rights reserved

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