Photo: Amitai Asif
No mortar
No wheel
No motors to wield,
Yet time
And the elements
Toppled not what they’d built.
The wonder, the magic,
The near perfect
Craftsmanship:
Machu Picchu
Continues
To hold awe
In its grip.
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Wonder
Photo: Amitai Asif
There she stands,
Belongs,
Enlivened
By the land
That mountains birthed,
And the knowledge
Of the power
That she holds
Through Mother Earth.
For the Photo for the Week Challenge: portrait
“Used to be a zoo,” Ol’ Joe stuffed his cheek full of chewing tobacco. No frowning from Mama could make him give it up.
I gazed at the empty parking lot. We kept the market open by sheer willpower and another mortgage.
Mama often argued it was money down the drain, but Pops would shake his head. “History is a merry-go-round, Penny. It’ll come back. We just have to hang in there a little longer.”
Then the two of them would look at Ol’ Joe, and I knew: closing the business would kill him. Grandpop’s life was tied into Route 66.
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Amitai Asif
Norway fjord
Smooth as glass
Flowing cold
Through mountains’ pass.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Smooth
Photo: Osnat Halperin-Barlev
Layer by layer
They go back
In time,
Descending through eras
They can carefully
Climb.
What whispers
What stories
Does the wadi
Impart?
Will their souls see
The footprints
These rocks know
By heart?
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Layer
Photo: Atara Katz
Their shadows walked ahead
Tasting paths
Testing light
Traveling a step
Before
Their feet
Pressed footprints
And memories
Into sand.
For the Lens-Artist Challenge: Shadows
It was the view that caught his heart when they’d first visited Tortola. The twins had just turned ten. He’d gotten a miserable case of traveler’s diarrhea and spent two days cocooned inside Aunt Essie’s cottage while everyone else was at the beach. He’d initially felt sorry for himself, but then the quietude enveloped him, and he found himself cherishing the time away from chit-chatter and the demands of the children, love them though he did.
He’d recovered sufficiently by the third day, and the shore was fabulous. Still a piece of him remained on the cottage’s porch, gazing into the horizon, sipping bland tea, and feeling a calm he hadn’t known possible.
They’d visited several more times over the years and when Aunt Essie died, she left him the cottage to sell, “for a nest-egg.”
The boys were in college. Bernice had moved on. He decided to move in.
For What Pegman Saw: British Virgin Islands
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
In the mood for some tea?
Come along here with me.
There are pooch pots
And kitsch pots
Elephant tea pot, too.
There’s a cow,
There are cats,
Which will be right for you?
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Rainbow colors
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
I did not quite expect,
On the beach, in the sun,
A visit from dinos
Puppeted by a man.
Granted these all were smaller
Than the ones I would fear,
But I still did not really
Want them too near.
My eyes must’ve
Been wide
As I waved
Him aside,
But two chairs
To the right
He sold three
With delight.
For the Lens-Artist Photo Challenge: Unexpected
Photo: canesjurij on Pixabay
“I’ll be building what?”
“Holzhausen. Firewood stacks.” Brother Joosep pointed at several rounded structures that looked like hermit huts (and that I had desperately hoped were not accommodation for trekker volunteers).
I didn’t know whether to be happy these weren’t meant as my lodging, or to be terrified at the prospect of having to produce one of those. The contraptions had to be twenty feet tall, and I could not imagine how anyone pulls out a piece of wood without the whole thing toppling on their heads. The mere thought of the Karmic penalty for causing the death of a monk was giving me palpitations.
“Do you need anyone to peel potatoes?” I tried.
The monk grinned. “Brother Ruuben, our cook, has all the hands he requires at the moment. However, we might need you to bring in some wood later. It helps ward off the evening chill.”
Trivia: Holzhausen are a centuries old European method of stacking firewood. Many are about 2 meters tall (6-9 feet), though some – as in the above photo from a Monastery in Estonia – can be upward of 6 meters in height (~ 20 feet). Holzhousen are self-standing structures that are reportedly quick to make and don’t need to be braced. The circular format is not only self-supporting but provides good airflow for split wood to dry quickly. As the wood is stacked, rows are angled down slightly toward the center. This helps drain rain and melted snow and helps support the tapering of the stack.
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