PHOTOGRAPHER'S DIARY: When I was back at Hilltop Pond last week, the color had mostly blown away or crisped to brown. Low clouds floated over the hills and a thin mist rose from the still water. However, this shot seemed to me to come from someplace even darker. It could easily be the blackness of the words Shakespeare chooses in next quatrain of sonnet 73 to image darkness overtaking "twilight..."
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
How smoothly those words slide from the tongue! However, the words that came to mind and that title this image are from the curses Lear hurls at his daughters before he rushes out into the storm. Although I seek no such vengeance on anyone (at least none who aren't in office), I am amused at how observant of natural processes is this furious invocation of deities that Shakespeare puts in Lear's enraged speech.
