Boatshed

still they drift across
sun moon in search of
kindly faces

 flying south flying north
what is it
the gulls know

 looking out
seems like
looking in

 a gathering of terns
they must have heard
good news

 this rare shell
too beautiful
to keep

 old boots old hat
anchor stowed up forehead
I’m ready

State of the Boatshed 1

There is a system in the chaos – so I tell myself….

A perfect shack….

 

Jill Pearse (1942 – 2024)
Pencil drawing

Leaves –  one of a series –  recently arrived in the  Boatshed Gallery. It is a delicate still-life: beautifully observed. Jill had a sharp eye for detail. That was her great strength – and she used it well….

 

Chiyo-ni (1703 – 1775)

clear water
no front
no back

 

From: The Poetry of Chiyo-ni
Translated by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi
Tuttle Publishing: 2025

This beautiful Vihuela is now in my care. It comes from the workshop of a  South Australian luthier, Tim Guster.
The soundboard is European Spruce; the finger-board Macassar Ebony; the side and bottom American Rock Maple. Note the striking ‘fiddleback’ grain, and the fine Rose decoration.
Tim makes Harps, Renaissance and Baroque Lutes, Theorbos, Baroque Guitars, Vihuelas, 19th century Guitars and Hurdy Gurdies – these last, in particular, requiring a level of skill well above my level….

….has weathered the storm. I take that as a good omen. I will keep chipping away.

 

We would tend those glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole  anxious day – so we would work.
Gimli, son of Gloin (from The Two Towers: JRR Tolkien).

And so it goes with Ark 1: wood once removed cannot be replaced. Or to paraphrase Dad: Consider thrice, chip once….

 

Here is the short biography which accompanied Mark’s painting, Willunga Hills, at Waverley Homestead National Trust Gallery, Willunga.

We were  up at the Estuary late afternoon, and Sam took these excellent photos on his phone camera (electronic devices can be useful, now and then).
You can see that recent storms have lowered the river bed by some six or seven feet – and unearthed a slumbering giant, hidden for as long as I can remember.
But maybe, after all,  it was cast up on the king tide.
By mid-December it will have vanished.

like me the sea creature
from who knows where
dreaming of summer

Estuary 1