balanced diet

Nereida, nine weeks; she started to seriously eat greens at the age of eight weeks (and had a clear preference for thistly stuff); additional milk was needed until the age of about 16 to 20 weeks.

evolution

Nereida, nine weeks; the horn cups got visible, and I was still waiting for the upper incisors to break through... vainly, as I learnd some time later: goats don't develop any upper incisiors. ;-)

magic to change the world

LOVE

there is enough magic here
inside this one word
to change our world forever

mountain snow lying
across life’s pasture a
shadow reflected over
stone moss forest dream
man’s ability to under
stand nature’s living need

green comet seen in the sky
time’s gift, another
universe visiting our earth

rested bow spirit fly
into night’s seamless
ocean bring sea jewel
to land’s line touching
justice’s shore, man’s
ability to know freedom

green comet seen in the sky
time’s gift, another
universe visiting our earth

bridge between heavens’s
storm and fern field
pathway to a pollen canyon
mixed outside God’s vision,
our destiny painted in key ink
sand the touch of a woman

there is enough magic here
inside this one word
to change our world forever

LOVE

~ Joseph Mayo Wristen ~

.

What do animals dream?

Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreams
unspeakably human or unimaginably bestial?

Do they struggle to catch in their slumber
what is too slippery for the fingers of day?

Are there subtle nocturnal intimations
to illuminate their undreaming hours?

Are they haunted by specters of regret
do they visit their dead in drowsy gratitude?

Or are they revisited by their crimes
transcribed in tantalizing hieroglyphs?

Do they retrace the outline of their wounds
or dream of transformation, instead?

Do they tug at obstinate knots
inassimilable longings and thwarted strivings?

Are there agitations, upheavals or mutinies
against their perceived selves or fate?

Are they free of strengths and weaknesses peculiar
to horse, deer, bird, goat, snake, lamb or lion?

Are they ever neither animal nor human
but creature and Being?

Do they have holy moments of understanding
deep in the seat of their entity?

Do they experience their existence more fully
relieved of the burden of wakefulness?

Do they suspect, with poets, that all we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream?

Or is it merely a small dying
a little taste of nothingness that gathers in their mouths?

~ Yahia Lababidi ~

.

tender beauty

Nereida, eight weeks.

sweet little hartbreaker

Nereida, eight weeks.

chummy

Nereida, eight weeks, and me, enjoying the late afternoon sun.

recollection

Nereida, seven weeks. After her first instensive period of independence and rambling through the hills among her fellows, she returned to the habit of spending her days close to the mobile home.

humble & green [Ithaca or the Promised Land]

dedicated to Zé
(and I still carry your heart with me...)


To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadnesssuch is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

~ Jorge Luis Borges ~
.

little sweet glutton

Nereida, barely seven weeks. Born in the last days of February, she was one of the earliest goatlings on the island, and during the first weeks cow milk only was available; in the middle of April, I finally could get goat milk from the sheep- and goatherds, and Nereida coped very well with the change; at that age, she still drank three to five bottles (2.5 dl) per day.

Hymn to Eros

O Eros, silently smiling one, hear me.
Let the shadow of thy wings
brush me.
Let thy presence
enfold me, as if darkness
were swandown.
Let me see that darkness
lamp in hand,
this country become
the other country
sacred to desire.

Drowsy god,
slow the wheels of my thought
so that I listen only
to the snowfall hush of
thy circling.
Close my beloved with me
in the smoke ring of thy power,
that we way be, each to the other,
figures of flame,
figures of smoke,
figures of flesh
newly seen in the dusk.

~ Denise Levertov ~

.

the sound of your name

What am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own
name? repeating it over and over;
I stand apart to hear -- it never tires me.

To you, your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in
the sound of your name?

~ Walt Whitman ~

Focus: Love

Amateurs, by definition, work for love alone — so what subject could be more fitting for the first entry in a brand-new series focusing on the art of the amateur photographer than that potent symbol of love: the heart? Through their snapshot-hungry eyes, these photographers glimpse hearts everywhere: in graffiti scrawled on an alleyway wall, in paper cut by a child, and in nature’s worn stones scattered on a forest floor. All that’s necessary is to open our eyes… which is what this collection inspires us to do. (Lark Books)

FULFILLMENT — dedicated to Hannes

WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS — dedicated to Christian

SECRET PARADISE — dedicated to Zé

DRAGON HEART — dedicated to Nikos

TEARS OF HEAVEN — dedicated to Daniela

LOVE PEARLS — dedicated to my beloved daughters

INNERMOST — dedicated to K.

a prayer for animals

During the months I lived in close contact with goats, I got to know them as smart, sensitive and soulful creatures. In Greece, where goats (among others) commonly are treated as livestock without sensations, the following prayer should be nailed to every barn, church and kitchen door.


Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends the animals, especially for animals who are suffering; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death. We entreat for them all thy mercy and pity, and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals and so to share the blessings of the merciful.

~ Albert Schweitzer ~
.

cloud nine

Nereida, six weeks

goat kids & their mums

Bringing up a kitten, a puppy or even a foal would have been much easier for me, for in the beginning I hardly knew something about goatlings; watching goat mums with their kids helped me a lot to understand Nereida's needs.

goat kids #4