Prima materia

Posted on December 25, 2008 by Dave Bonta
This entry is part 6 of 16 in the series Postcards from a Conquistador

Poem: 'Before we brought them more specialized tools, they used to make blades and mirrors from the same black stone: blades for killing, mirrors for capturing souls.'

For a larger version of the photo sans poem, see here.

Series Navigation← The birdsKnight →

About Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta (bio) crowd-sources his problems by following his gut, which he shares with one quadrillion of his closest microbial friends --- a tight-knit, symbiotic community comprising some 500 different species of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa.
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11 Responses to Prima materia

  1. MB says:
    December 25, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    Beautiful, in a chilling kind of way.

  2. bev says:
    December 25, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    A terrific photo – and the water and ice do look so much like obsidian.
    This has been such an interesting series.

  3. Jarrett says:
    December 25, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    I was just reading an NYT article about the problems that wind farms have in the winter, notably a tendency to throw off sharp bits of ice. Then I click to you and find this. Very nice. :)

  4. dale says:
    December 26, 2008 at 12:57 am

    My favorite card in the series so far. The image is stunning.

  5. Peter says:
    December 26, 2008 at 1:15 am

    One of the best ever. Perfect marriage of words and image. Good as each is without the other, they’re each better together.

  6. Michelle says:
    December 26, 2008 at 5:38 am

    Striking, Dave. The photograph and the lines – and the combined creation.

  7. Dave says:
    December 26, 2008 at 10:07 am

    Thanks for the supportive comments. All the other poems in the series so far have emerged from prolonged contemplation of the images, but I thought this one up on a walk at dusk, and only subsequently looked in my photoblog archives and found the obvious image. I hesitated a little before posting it because it represents a bigger step into the world of the actual conquistators than any of the others so far.

    Jarrett – Thanks for making that association. Maybe this does still have a contemporary resonance, then! Yes, ice-throw is a problem with wind turbines, though a relatively minor one compared to some of ther other drawbacks (habitat fragmentation, bird- and bat-kill, local climate disruption, power grid destabilization, shadow flicker and noise).

  8. Jo says:
    December 26, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Fantastic. I really love what you’re doing here. I think it’s a shame that you’re not including them in Postal Poetry. I understand the editorial policy but they are so good, Dave. This is my favourite, until tomorrow’s *grin*.

  9. Lorianne says:
    December 26, 2008 at 11:27 am

    What Dale said: this is my favorite so far.

  10. Larry Ayers says:
    December 27, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    Love this series! These posts remind me of Lori Witzel’s at Chatoyance.

  11. Dave says:
    December 27, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    Jo – Thanks. Part of the reason I’m doing this, of course, is to try and raise interest in the genre – and thus indirectly lead to more submissions to PP.

    Lorianne – Hey, thanks for stopping by.

    Larry – High praise. I love Lori’s photos.