Glastonbury Tor

splendid, splendid

Wow Julius. Exactly how many Close Encounters have you experienced??

Wow! IR?

!!! its nearly a cocteau film.

Greta, great photo, Mr U. Gladstonbury Tor is a wonderful place, very mystical - but it never quite looked like this when I was there...

I love the Tor.

And the man I love lives right near it.

Excellent!!

Snowflakes tapping on the windowpane
evoking emotions
trapped inside old memories like photographs
this is a night for stories
and on a night like this
she is the only story

The moon shines through the leafless branches
reflecting like a million diamond facets
from the crystals of snow
lifting the illusion of isolation
one feels naturally in the cold air.
Stars, like white moths, fill the sky in that
moment before they transform into
infinite snowflakes. Winter has come.

The minstrel shivers and stokes his fire
though he is already aflame with the
warming ardor of love. Her village is close
and as he strums his lyre her name
resonates in the poet's songs.

I tell this story for she is not here
and shrouded in my memories of her
I am loath to do else than sing her song.

Four thousands years ago, from this primal
woodscape rose the moon goddess
and she walked the land
past the earthfresh meadow where
one day I would take you
lie with you in the spring,
on that fragrant ground
your aroma mingling with
that of the fertile loam
the singular lingering bit of
geomancy stirring
between us and we wrestle
like Creiddyladd and Gwythr
at first groping and eager
but learning with each touch
those places that please
and we meld, liquid silver
and molten gold into one ring.

The minstrel weaves his seductive song
and they consummate their love
but as he must, he leaves,
promising swift return.

Love suspended as fate interferes
a common theme of both myth
and modernity, but its abundance
offers me no solace on this
foggy, snowy night.

Daybreak, and he makes her village
but she, of course, is gone. Not one
offers assistance, not one but the
withered witch, her hut in the
hazel wood. "Gone, she is, to
Avalon, a priestess now, not
your love." He protests, and
the fire of his passions melts
for an instant the witch's frozen
heart, stone all those years
since her own love disappeared.

So he sets off, her instructions fresh
"On the day Spring opens her first rose,
carry a branch of Avalon's tree with you
silver, its white blossoms promising golden fruit
carry it across the isle of glass,
seeing with otherworldly sight
and you will meet her again."
So he makes his way there.

Here, but not only here, the
veil between worlds is thin
and we dance across it like
waterbugs skittering on the
surface of an old well
tendrils of flame from my fire
reflected in the pool like
the light of your eye,
your beauty in the mirror
and I remember all this
though it is raining and
all I can see in the pool
are the rippling reflections
of the tree's bare branches

It rises from a scar on the earth
on the coldest of winter days
in advance of the snowstorm
and is recorded by a lone
watcher, fulfilling surveillance duty
high above at the top of the ancient tor.
Some days it manifests as a light mist,
others as a thick fog shrouding all
that is real as that brook flowing through a vale
teeming with silver fingerlings,
spawn of a bounteous spring
winnowed one by one, like the fair maidens
in the village, until only the wise trout remains,
perhaps the one caught by Aengus, that
singular maiden who outlasts the others.

But on that Spring day, the poet faded
easily through the soft veil, branch
in hand, calling softly her name,
answered only by a child's laughter in the wind.
And he waited, patiently for his love
until the branch took root and he
became the tree.

I know we plucked the golden apple
from the poet's tree, that day beneath
Autumn's sun, we tasted the silver
sweet flesh beneath the golden skin.
We dreamed the dream of the
lovelorn poet and his love, mother
now, priestess serving her goddess.

One appleseed planted in the light of the full moon
germinates, grows, marks the sacred spot
on the body of the goddess,
blossoms into that one tree

and as you walk through the orchard
looking for that tree-
planted from seeds carried from Glastonbury-
silvered with age, wizened by the
wind of many icy winters,
and as the yellow orange sky
presages imminent dawn
and your rosy cheeks are visible
behind the clouds of your breath
you find your quarry and
fall on your knees before its trunk
feeling again my first kiss on your lips.

This image has been added to the Flickr Museum for making explore's top 25. Kudos!You can check it out here...

Hi, I am an admin for a group called Landmarks around the world, and I discovered this great shot in Glastonbury, United Kingdom. We love to have your photo added to the group.

This is a Fantastic piece of work!
Why don't you log on to contaxg.com and join the Contax G community??

No probs my friend. I sold all my digital gear and use the G2 exclusively now. Film seems to have 'it', in my opinion.
you got some great stuff and the G is a class act

That's fantastic. That's exactly how I see the tor with my 'third' eye!