Greetings from San Cristobal, NM. A very Happy New Year from our family to yours.
This week a sunset to see out the old year and a Red-tailed Hawk to usher in the new year.
… and a Red-tailed Hawk to herald the new year, albeit a little bedraggled and battered but still with enough life left to do the things necessary to live life and do what hawks do.
As always thank you for looking. Happy New Year. I appreciate all the support, kindness, comments, and compliments over the past year and beyond. G
The Red-tailed Hawk is one of my animal totems, and I am uplifted every time one appears. What is your animal totem? Please leave a comment if so inclined.
Below is a poem by the Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, a favorite of mine.
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
— Ted Hughes
13 thoughts on “Happy New Year, 01-01-2025”
Hi Geraint, Beautiful sunset, reminds me of the poem, or rather, the poem reminded me of it sequentially speaking. Sunsets are majestic, viewed best in my opinion over water, which also has that capability. But I’m a Connecticut girl. Happy New Year! Alexis
Blessings on the year ahead – the photos and poem set a great beginning for 2025
Gratefully – M
lovely poem from the viewpoint of the red-tailed hawk. I never knew any poems by Ted Hughes. The orange sunset looks like a Celtic goddess’s hair.
That sky! Oh my goodness, such gorgeous colors and textures. Makes me sigh deeply.
My spirit animal is the coyote. My heart skips a beat whenever I catch a glimpse of one, sometimes even running down the street of my neighborhood here in Palm Springs, CA. And I treasure the photo you took of that coyote sitting on the rocks, staring intently at you. (And now at me in my studio! 😊)
A very happy new year and much love to you and yours Geraint.
Carve me as a magpie, plucking tail-feathers from wild turkeys for a laugh.
Many an Irish Lass I’ve known but none with hair screaming fire like that…
More perhaps an aerial view of Volcano’s scorched inner chaos….per my Northern Harrier reflection
Thank you, Geraint, for all the beauty you share.
Thanks for sharing the Hughes’. I hadn’t read it before. Have a great New Year, friend.
That sky!! If I can’t be there to see, I’ll return to your post. Happy 2025, Geraint.
https://www.spirit-animals.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Oryx-Isolated-on-Desert-Background.jpg
Mahalo for a year of exquisite photos that have added beauty to my life, Geraint.
My Spirit Animal is a majestic Oryx from a lifetime in the Oryx Nome of Ancient Egypt.
Wishing you many blessings for the new year, Geraint.
Lovely pictures!
Beautiful Sunset. great photo of the hawk. My spirit animal is a bear.
Beautiful, Geraint. Happy New Year and many thanks for the continuing inspiration and support.
Scott