Beulah Hill: Slideshow. by Michael Gallagher
by Steven McCabe
Crescent Moon hangs loose from sparkling Venus,
Blinking satellite hobbles through cobalt sky,
City silhouettes haunt low horizon,
On a garden bench, frozen crystals
Reflect the hidden stars,
Robin song greets nascent dawn,
Chimney crow steals dregs
Of last night’s heat.
Sudden gust stirs the stillness,
Threads the willows dangling tresses,
Scrapes the bones of a dying oak
And drives snow-clouds over
Croydon Town.
Mike Gallagher’s collection ‘Stick on Stone’ is published by Revival Press. His poetry has been published worldwide and translated into Croatian, Japanese, Dutch, German and Chinese.
Before deciding to address Beulah Hill: Slideshow. I had been creating images of an eBook Reader in the future, discovered as temperatures shifted, revealing a poem covered with soil and frost & still mysteriously visible. I decided to adapt those visuals and, befitting the poem, layer earth-tones with space images from the NASA Goddard Photo and Video files @ Wikipedia Commons.
poemimage 
layered perfection poem and art are seamless I initially thought…this is what ice would look like if I were trapped underneath it.
Thanks for your thoughts about the poem and images working together Heather…and let us hope you stay above ice always.
Thanks Michael Gallagher for the gorgeous words, and to Steve McCabe for bringing the poem alive with such fantastic and vivid imagery
Thank you for taking the time to share this generous thought cb.
Thank you, Steven, for your multi-layered interpretation of my poem. It is interesting to see it through another’s eyes.
Thank you, Heather and cb. for your encouraging comments.
My pleasure Michael to have the privilege of addressing this beautiful poem with a visual response.
Stunning dance of words and images – kudos to you both…
Thank you John. I was feeling Michael’s words dance great distances also appearing up close & aiming our eye at the moment. I’m glad you enjoy the interplay of these words with the images they inspired. I enjoyed ‘diving in’ myself.
The depth in these images make me feel like I’m looking through (or into?) thick glass-block windows. A beautiful cool-evening mood in the words and images. Magical!
Thank you Karen. A beautiful cool evening in the poem. I can feel it. And just to spin off – I like the idea of a thick glass-block window holding a diorama….Or the idea of seeing through a diorama into…some older history with tattered leaflets and twisted rags…natural inks.
Thanks to everyone and especially Steven for all the comments and the various insights. As is often the case, the poet is as much in the dark as the reader, being simply the medium through which the poem expresses itself.
Thank you Michael. I’ll say the same darkness is true for the visuals. I operate intuitively and later hear such things it’s like keys tumbling in a lock.