I toiled all day on this…

Well, I didn’t really toil all day, but the idea for this poem had been floating around in my head for a while, and I had to take some serious time to snatch it out of the air.   In any case, I hope y’all like it.  

Recognition

There are moments when I don’t know you.

When I’ve lost you in a crowd,
your face becomes flat and anonymous
like all of the others,
as if you are hardening yourself
to the shoulders pushing in around you,
to the faces that are as blank as your own.

For a moment, when I’ve spotted you,
and you’ve spotted me, and our eyes lock,
my warm, eager gaze bounds up to you
like a dog you haven’t seen for years
and don’t immediately recognize,
one that you’re afraid of. 
For a moment, you are the person I know,
but you’re not, you are the person I love,
but you’re not. 

But only for a moment.

Or in restaurants, when I’ve excused myself
for a minute, and left you alone,
and return to see you as anyone in the world
would see you: shoulders hunched, protective
and unwelcoming, like an animal tensed,
ready to spring away. 

In that moment, you are
cautious but vulnerable, shuttered closed
like a house before the hurricane,
with so many precious things inside
to hold close, to keep away from the wind
flailing at the windows.

But only for a moment.  Always
just a moment.  Then your gaze reaches out
to embrace mine.  Then,
you throw open the shutters
and let the light pour in, and I am
warmed again.
 

Thwarted by WordPress…

For whatever reason, WordPress has decided to close comments on my photos.  If you have comments on them, post them here instead.

Bee-utiful bees and butterflies…

Yeah, that was a really lame pun.  Bee-lieve me, I’m usually not that bad.  But sometimes my puns leave people somewhat bee-mused.  As opposed to amused…

Anyway, this is a bee (if you didn’t get that already) clinging to a flame azalea.  When the flowers of a flame azalea die, they drop the trumpets of their blossoms down the stamens to dangle in pink rows all over the bush.  This is one of the few plants I know of that looks as cool when it’s dead as it does when it’s alive.  It’s beautiful either way.  And it really is reminiscent of its fiery namesake, especially when it’s in the morning sun.  I really like the way my camera rendered the colors in this photo, even though I wish the focus down the bee’s body were more consistent.

And this is a tiger swallowtail butterfly, one of the most common we see.  Black swallowtails, as well as the occasional mourning cloak butterfly, also frequent the azaleas.  The tiger swallowtails also adore pink zinnias, but the zinnias aren’t doing too well this year.  In fact, the flame azalea is one of the few plants that seems to have escaped the effects of the sharp, violent cold snap we had at the beginning of the season.  It froze the buds on the trees and the leaves of any precocious plant that rose from its winter slumber too early.  The mountains basically were cheated out of spring, because the temperature hopped straight from cold to hot, and the trees never had  that bright, ethereal glow of buds that you only see in spring, because the buds were destroyed.   

Haiku…for you!

Because I am feeling tired and lazy and lame, I’m only posting haiku tonight.  These three are obviously separate, but I would love to do a related series of them sometime. 

Home

Sheets smoothed by kind hands,
so tight I slide in like a
letter opener. 

The Husks of Dried Flowers

So soon we are dead,
drawn like ravaged buds, tired men
and faded women.

Icicles

Trees drop cold daggers,
thrusting their knives to glint in
the soft river bank.

Right now:  Listening to Wooden Ships by Crosby, Stills and Nash.  Good stuff. 

Walking tables, talking shoes…

Here’s a poem I really like by Lisel Mueller.  It’s from the collection Good Poems for Hard Times, which is wonderful at times and a little inadequate or fluffy at other times.  Don’t go into it expecting to be spiritually enlightened or otherwise blown away at every page.  But every now and then, something will bowl you over and demand to be read again. 

Things
by Lisel Mueller

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things.
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety. 

It is funny how we love to put a human profile on everything.  Parts of things become humanized.  Animals become anthropomorphized.  Every alien we can come up with for movies and the like is humanoid, usually with some combination of eyes and a nose and a mouth.  And our view of the universe and spirituality and heaven is limited by our near-sighted human perspective.  We love to name things and define things, especially in human terms, and when we can’t, we feel lost. 

Stumbling into the blogosphere….

After much gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands, and frustration with Adobe Photoshop, I have finally made my incredible, fabulous, stunning debut in the world of blogs. 

This blog started out as an attempt to force myself to write more.  Without deadlines breathing down my neck, I sometimes become a wee bit lazy, and having even a very small audience will put some amount of pressure on me.  This’ll serve as my kick in the butt to get writing.  For the most part, I’ll be sharing my poetry, but I might throw in the occasional excerpt of a short story.  I hope to get some good feedback and criticism.  Please feel free to leave your comments.

But I’m also an artist, photographer, and a general cynic.  So here and there, my paintings, photos, and bitter commentary on society will crop up.  Please feel free to comment on these as well, and leave your thoughts on and criticism for the artwork. 

Anyway, here’s the poem that gave me the idea for the name of this blog.  I’m not sure if I’m really satisfied with the title, but it’s appropriate, since I’m in wonderment of just about everything.  There’s so much beauty even in the things that we ignore.  We’re given gifts everyday, but most people throw them away or just miss them completely. 

Wonderment

It all started with the pennies.
I’d see one in every parking lot,
glittering near the storm drain
where it’d been swept to
in the last rain, or in the road,
where it’d rolled from some rich lady’s
pocketbook and been scuffed and forgotten.
They’d skid up and down the aisle of the city bus
until I’d reach down to pick them up. 
I would hold up checkout lines, feeling
under the counter edge for the one I’d dropped
until someone waiting, impatient and gray,
would say something sharp.
Soon there was one wherever I looked.
I’d trowel them up, green and corroded,
from the roots of the garden, find them
kicked into the crack under my door,
in the drain when I’d wash dishes,
in the bottom of the washing machine,
in the sweepings off the floor.
Everyday I collected a small prize, worthless,
and yet I was so rich. 

Soon it wasn’t just the pennies. 
Soon I was collecting a prize every time
I blinked.  One day, it was an antique button,
intricate and woven, pounded into the dirt path.
Sometimes it was a rock, a quartz crystal,
or granite studded with mica.
Some days I couldn’t stick in my pocket.
Some days it was the pink glint of sunrise
on my hood as I crested a hill
into the suddenly sun-dazzled day.
It was the skeletal leaf, chewed by bugs
into thin brown lace, or the sight of a heron
soaring just feet over the roadway.
It was the old lady, out tending her poppies
every morning, who would wave at me,
and her poppies would wave too in the draft
of the passing car.  It was sound of rain,
the sound of wing beats.  Soon I was drunk on glory,
stumbling at the sight of sun-edged clouds
and trees, of hummingbirds and fog-filled valleys,
crazed, but yet so sane, empty,
but yet so full.