The Aletsch Glacier.

Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland.

Awesomely immense,
Greater than the mind can grasp
Until, in close proximity you stand
Cowed by its size-
Beautiful in grandeur,
Sweeping a wide curving path
From high mountain top-
Utterly irresistible,
For millennia gouging
Its curving, deep-crevassed, ice-piled,
Turquoise-tinted, moraine-laden,
Boulder-strewn, U-shaped path
Through immense, snow covered,
Treeless, granite mountains-
Unstoppable, utterly irresistible,
Until the 21st century's
Insidious warming, partnered
With apathy and denial,
Decreed
A water-laden, gushing, ice-boulder strewn,
Slow, sad retreat.

 
From Wikipedia.

The Aletsch Glacier (German: Aletschgletscher) or Great Aletsch Glacier (German: Grosser Aletschgletscher) is the largest glacier in the Alps. It has a length of about 23 km (14 mi) and covers more than 120 square kilometres (46 sq mi) in the eastern Bernese Alps in the Swiss canton of Valais. The Aletsch Glacier is composed of three smaller glaciers converging at Concordia, where its thickness is estimated to be near 1 km (3,300 ft). It then continues towards the Rhone valley before giving birth to the Massa River.

On August 18, 2007, photographer Spencer Tunick used hundreds of naked people in a "living sculpture" on the Aletsch Glacier in a photo shoot intended to draw attention to global warming and the shrinking of the world's glaciers. The temperature was about 10 °C (50 °F) at the time of the photo shoot. The 600 participants on the shrinking glacier volunteered for Tunick (a collaboration with Greenpeace) to let the world know about the effects of global warming on the melting Swiss glaciers.[6] The Aletsch Glacier receded by 100 m (330 ft) between 2005 and 2006.[7]

Australian War Cemetery, the Somme.

The day is weeping, quietly, but weeping.
A soft grey mist covers the distant ridges,
Lies close upon the green, lush folds,
And drips off the thousands of white crosses
Standing rigidly at parade ground attention,
Marked with this sad simplicity:
"A Soldier of the Great War".
Hard to think that in this landscape a century ago
A voracious, nightmarish Nationalism
Opened its giant maw and rumbled creaking
Over the green folds, quiet woods and farmlands,
Venting as it went a putrid, reeking stench
Of mud, barbed wire, crater holes, shells, gas,
Kilometre upon winding kilometre of trenches
And a tangled, twist of young lives
Stuck in the deep mud, or huddled
Beneath the percussive thud of artillery,
Or emerging from their trenches
Into the withering staccato spray of machine gun.
Yes, it is quiet. The landscape is green.
The guns have gone. The young men are dust.
Gone too are their mothers, or lovers,
Their brothers, sisters, family, friends.
Gone too is the mud, the gas, the trenches,
The inconsolable grief and loss,
But a soft grey mist covers the distant ridges,
Lies close upon the green, lush, folds
And drips off the thousands of white crosses
Marked with this sad simplicity:
"A Soldier of the Great War",
For the day is weeping, quietly weeping
And must go on weeping still.

La Loire à Vélo

La Loire à Vélo.

We cycle along the Loire for a while.
There is bird song in the air.
It is quiet. The only sound is the swish of tyres
Or the gentle whirr of chain.
We are in no hurry, drifting along
As the Loire makes its full-bodied, green/brown,
Cloud-shadowed, tree-mirrored, sun-sparked way-
Dropping over weirs with a roaring surge,
Swirling and eddying around islands and under bridges,
Drifting beside
Fields of young green wheat,
Bright green burst of new leaf grapes,
Long rows of young corn,
The beautiful litter of bright-red poppies,
Flowing past
Teetering, hay-filled ancient barns,
Little, carefully tended allotments,
Old villages with their cobbled, twisting streets,
Cottages bright with rose-flowering walls,
Grand chateaus either sheer and impregnable above the cliff edge
Or enveloped by its protective, swirling current,
Meandering through deeply shaded forest,
On and on, for hour upon hour, until finally we are at Tours,
A little tired, glad of a rest, a chance to attend
To the momentary human needs
Of beings so anchored in time,
To wash, eat, sleep, dream,
While the Loire makes its full-bodied, green/brown,
Cloud-shadowed, tree-mirrored, sun-sparked way,
Swirling, eddying, drifting, meandering,

on

and on

and on

and on....

On First Viewing Paris

There is the low hill of Montmartre
And the modest river of the Seine
Carving an elegant curve through the city
And curling around two small islands,
But it is not geography that makes Paris great.

There are lovely, low-rise, red-geranium-dotted stone buildings,
Six stories and then an attic roof of slate or curving metal;
Many little parks; tree-lined wide boulevards;
Winding, history-filled cobbled streets;
But it is not these that make Paris great.

It is along the monumental stretch of the Seine,
Under or across its beautifully arched bridges,
Past buildings grand, golden and rich in history,
Where ancient obelisks stretch into the sky,
The spires of towering cathedrals soar
And the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay
House and shelter their grand beauty
That you can begin to feel the greatness of Paris.

It is a greatness beyond buildings.
Everywhere are the words Liberté , Égalité , Fraternité,
And everywhere the sense that here
A blood-stained tide swept away a past
Based on inequality, justice and oppression,
That the sweep of human history was irrevocably changed,
That the idea of privilege of birth
Should not determine opportunity
And that citizenship should be open to all.
Here you begin to feel the greatness of Paris.
It is in Napoleon's Arc de Triumph,
Not just a victory arch or a monument to ego
But a statement about justice and opportunity;
You sense it in the once blood-soaked Place de Concorde,
Where the guillotine took ruthless revenge
For a thousand years of injustice and greed.
Yes, it is here that you  feel the greatness of Paris.

And inside the great museums that line the Seine,
Musée d'Orangerie, Musée d'Orsay and L'ouvre,
Hang the great paintings of the world,
Not just for a strutting, privileged few
But for a great human throng from all over the world
That stand in long queues to glimpse their beauty,
Their extraordinary representations of the complexity of the world
And the creative power of humanity.
This also is what makes Paris great.

And even if you know as you walk along the Seine
That these grand and monumental buildings
Once stood as the proud boasts of individuals,
Or rose because of the stifling oppression
Of the cruel co-rule of Church and Monarchy,
Which for more than a millennium built and maintained power
By a cruel, ruthless, selfish oppression,
They now stand beautiful, graceful, golden and grand,
Monuments to the greatness of Paris, the glory of France,
And, by extension, to the whole of humanity.

Spring in Geneva.

15 May.

Spring waves its luxuriant, green wand over the city. The wildflowers raise their red, blue and yellow heads and dance above the meadow grass. The hedges that line the streets and gardens are thick and green. New bright leaves adorn the ancient oaks and chestnuts. Everywhere is a pink or blue abundance of azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs and wisteria but across the mirrored silver lake the steeply-rising Jura Mountains are still tipped with a thin ribbon of snow, a lingering reminder of the bare coldness of now almost swept-away winter.

Flight from Sydney to Geneva

13th May, 2014.

A little wobble. A bump. The great wings stretching a long way out above their massive pendant engines. A pause. A whine. A sudden surge. Rumbling. Shaking. Gathering speed. And then suddenly smoother, the land is falling away, the light is lying in great, softly glowing columns upon the silver sea, turning west, across the dry, brown continent, over land rippled as if by some vast tide or occasionally deeply gouged by a giant claw, over the expanse of dry salt lakes, above castle clouds and distant high-rise cloud metropolises, westward, ever westward, towards the setting sun, the endless night and finally the high, snow-covered, green-valleyed Alps of Switzerland.