Where sunlit waters silver-spill,
The pines stand watch upon the hill;
The tumbled stones in quiet lay,
And greet the hush of breaking day.
The tide draws in with gentle hand,
To smooth the edges of the land;
While spruce and fern, in seaward air,
Breathe out a psalm as soft as prayer.
O sea, O stone, O steadfast tree,
You keep the Maker’s poetry;
And I, who pause upon this stair,
Am blessed to find His glory there.
Two green shoulders stoop to drink the lake,
And in that stillness, heaven stirs awake,
Clouds unhurried, psalm-like, drift and pass
Above the water’s slow, unshattered glass.
Silence here has learned the tongue of light,
The far shore dissolving, tender, into white;
And something more than summer lingers near,
A door left open in the quiet air.
The sun descends and sets the tide aflame,
As if the deep remembered God by name.
Each wave that breaks rehearses our own breath,
A brief ascent, a bowing down to death.
The gold dissolves; the horizon drinks the light;
Creation sighs, and hands the day to night.
Yet still the sea, unmastered and unmade,
Keeps time with One whose glory does not fade.
And I, small witness on this trembling shore,
Am taught by waves what words cannot restore:
That all which rises must in mercy fall,
And falling, find the Love that holds it all.
Along the silvered edge of tide,
Where restless waters meet the shore,
A sanderling on stilted stride
Attends the sea’s unhurried lore.
His feathered mantle, ash and snow,
A cloak of cloud upon the swell;
He bends where shallow ripples flow
And gleans what humble tides foretell.
No hurried thought disturbs the air,
He keeps a slower, older creed:
To walk the margin, stoop, and share
The morning’s small, sufficient need.
And I, who watch him from the sand,
Would learn the wisdom of his art,
To take what’s given, hand to hand,
Between the waves that cross the heart.
Down mossy ledge and stone the waters fall,
A hidden calm the pines and hollows call.
Through cleft of rock the silver ribbons run,
And braid their prayer beneath the veiled sun.
Here silence learns the tongue the wild has known,
God’s whisper cut in water, moss, and stone.
Wild Cape Photography is back! Well, truthfully, it never really left. The Instagram page has been happily rolling along this whole time. But this blog, which launched way back in 2017 as the anchor, the cornerstone, the beating heart of all things Wild Cape, took what we shall call a temporary sabbatical thanks to the dueling ailments of technical issues and that eternal thief one might refer to as time.
Sadly, those same tech problems made off with all of the archives from 2020 onward, so what you’ll find here now are the survivors, the plucky little posts from 2017 to 2020 that lived to tell the tale. Consider them the vintage collection.
But let us shed no tears. My camera is still fully operational, my pen is still far mightier than any sword, and my muse, Nature, is still filled with endless wonder. So shake loose from the fetters of nihilistic materialism, joyless brutalism, and whatever passes as mindless entertainment online these days. We are heading back to the Wild Cape and we are going to Live Wild!
Along the reed-lined water’s quiet crease,
He stands in olive stillness, robed in peace.
A statue cast in bronze and dappled slate,
He tends the silver current like a gate.
No restless wing disturbs the morning air;
He holds the hush of reverence and prayer.
The minnows script their sermons in the stream;
He reads each line as though it were a dream.
Then sudden as a psalm, he strikes for death,
And lifts a wriggling silver on his breath.
He shakes the river from his crested crown,
And folds again where willow boughs bend down.
The marshy world grows still, the reeds convene
To honor him, the priest of pond and green.
Why do people come to the sea?
It is the powerful water,
Or the mighty ocean breeze.
Or is it just in moments that make us feel alone,
The ocean is a wise companion,
That gives us a home.
There are little moments,
The rise and fall,
Setting suns reflecting off snow covered mountains,
The eternal crash of that mighty blue sea,
Gentle Summer breezes, and harsh winter gales.
These little moments,
Are what matters,
One must make the most of them,
For they rise and fall like the tides,
Controlled by some cosmic force,
Like the pull of the moon on the sea.
-James D. Vespoli
The Heron
Stately and resolute, he stands,
Along the margin of the river,
Watching,
Waiting.
Blue tinged gray feathers,
Sharp eyes fixed on the water.
Alone but not lonely,
Nature’s majesty separating him from the world,
Both of us in the same place searching for something,
Him for fish,
And I for what humans have always looked to Nature for, understanding.
As we search,
The warm setting summer sun gently shines a golden hue against his mighty wings,
The light then seems to drift down to that cool, rushing water,
And dances upon the ripples.
Then like lightning against the soft natural scene,
The Heron strikes.
Beautiful blue-gray feathers coil as his long neck extends,
His beak with swift agility pierces the golden-hued foam,
In an instant, he’s back in resolute form,
This time with a Brown Trout wiggling from his unrelenting beak.
Alone but not lonely,
We both stand by that river,
Searching for something,
For him, the trout was a hard-earned reward,
And for me,
Seeing such natural harmony,
My hard-earned reward,
Understanding that there is much to all of life’s small and intricate moments.
-James D. Vespoli
