Tillandsia Via Chattanooga

Tillandsia

An algorithmic walk (and respite from I75 traffic) leads to a man in a tie-dyed shirt selling air plants alongside a young bearded glassblower at the Chattanooga River Market. It’s curious how much the misplaced tropical plants above resemble the tendrils of captive animals living a few hundred yards away inside Tennessee Aquarium tanks.

Time Along Lofton Creek

North Along Lofton Creek

Lofton Creek Cypress Tree

The towering cypress on the left occupies an eight foot diameter half a mile from Pages Dairy Road in Yulee, Florida. The oldest known cypress in the world (burned in 2012 by a meth addict) was seventeen and a half feet wide and approximately 2000 years old, so this conifer has at least a millennium on any awkward biped rowing below its baobesque branches.

Blounts Branch Trellis Lofton Creek

Blounts Branch Trellis Resurrection

New growth hints at futility.

Clouds Over Coves

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Ian Marshall’s poems that accompany these photographs are from his book, Walden By Haiku.

Lake Jocassee 2

those clouds

     how they hang

          nothing like it in paintings

Lake Jocassee 3

dark now

     the wind still roars

          the waves still dash

Lake Jocassee 5

paddle strike

     the surrounding woods filled

          with circling sound

Lake Jocassee 6

a delicious evening

     the whole body

          one sense

Lake Jocassee 7

trembling circles seek the shore

     every disturbance

          smoothed away

Lake Jocassee 8

waves reflecting the sky

     a darker blue

          than the sky itself