Camouflage

Camouflage

 

In bladdered groves of Hormosira,

the blennies lurk: bogle-eyed,

splay-finned hunters, walkers-

underwater, mottled baskers

in lukewarm shallows, aflow

with the Phyllospora, going

slow at low tide, as though

absorbing ochres, mottled

umbers, and the dappled shades

of sunlight, weed and sand.

 

Poem by Giles Watson, 2013. The pictures show Blennies (or possibly a Gobies: ideas about identification much appreciated!) at Fisherman’s Beach, Albany, Western Australia.

 

This is the last time I will be uploading multiple images as illustrations for a poem on Flickr. The site has become so slow and cumbersome to use that I will only upload single images and poems from now on. If any of my contacts would like to see more images, you can seek me out on Facebook if you send a covering message saying who you are. It is very depressing that Flickr has become less and less of a delight to use, especially from the perspective of one who used to take great pleasure from its potential as a text-and-image site. Now, the text is all but invisible to most users, and the whole site is so slow and difficult to use that I no longer have time for it. The "new experience" experiment is even more of a disaster: poetry, for example, is so cramped that it looks like prose. Flickr staff: you are not listening to a lot of your oldest and most faithful customers. Why?

 

Done