The photographer intent
(it’s all about the focus),
unheedful of precarious
line-of-vision locus,
cries impulsive HALT
oblivious to drawbacks
with his hapless two assistants
athwart the railroad tracks.
Thanks to S.W. Berg, the Indiana Jones of photographers.
And this, dear reader, should you not recognize it,
is the old Purina factory in Fortville, IN,
a re-purposed, grittily imposing
monument to another time.
Och, dear reader, Paddy’s Day,
and what a gruesome sight!
Sure and we’ll be celebratin’
with the wearin’ o’ the white.
Two mallards in the pond
are not a sign of bliss
one has staked a claim
the other says it’s his
they cut each other off
in cut-throat promenade
unmindful of how handsome
their St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, dear reader!
May your emerald top hat shine as bright!
Somewhere in this barrenness
a quickening song is sung
I look hard but cannot tell
where it’s coming from
I cannot see a bird
so could it be the tree
trilling spring’s first music
coloraturally?
If all the world’s a stage
give mine the glint of gold
scarlet plush and curtains
in towering thespian fold.
Give me a kindly audience
who patiently endure
through epilogue’s last echo
from brassy overture.
Give me jeweled soliloquy
sparkling in its wit
not too long but long enough
for annals of World Lit.
Give me blue-white spotlight
commanding and intense
before that sky-high curtain
begins its last descent.
After final curtain
when there isn’t any more
may there be one ovation
which resounds with loud “Encore!”
I never know where Bill’s photos — or any photos, for that matter — will lead me. This one brought back one of my favorite memories of my father, a brilliant man who developed dementia. Before the dementia claimed him, he wrote his own obituary and declared to me that he wanted people to read it and say, “Let’s bring this guy back!” I laughed, but I felt his longing not to be forgotten. How human.
Many thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
When words die
and lie
lightly in brown piles,
and slatted benches
hold no one
in their arms,
will the stones remember
warmth
of blood and bone,
do they
hearth-like
hold the meaning?
Or does meaning lie too
in the dry brown
awaiting its ride on the scattering wind
leaving the stones to their empty cold?
Thanks more to photographer S.W. Berg.
Of all the rites of spring
as sure as tulip spear
the forty days of Lent
anchored budding year.
Forsaking sweets (so saintly!)
with purpled liturgies
we plodded ash-benighted
with callouses on knees.
Fish and macaroni
— with a ho, for purgatory! —
we loved and gobbled up
in pleasure gustatory,
and through the season’s sackcloth
on temptation’s slippery brink
cinnamony hot cross buns,
penitential wink.
I laugh at memories ancient
and admonishments infernal
but I don’t laugh at the lesson
that spring can be internal.
Whatever your traditions, dear reader,
may Shrove Tuesday bring you spring!
With more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
Millennia ago
a poet thought
“Why a word?”
and then she wrought
on desert stone
“Here am I”
knowing we’d
be passing by.
Thanks to photographer Mary Jo Bassett, who claims these are
two-thousand-year-old directions to Starbucks.
I leave to you, dear reader, all degrees of credulousness.
The season of soup slips behind us —
we can’t let it pass unobserved;
the kettles and bowls warmly bind us
with elixir drippingly served.
Here’s to you, soup,
you wondrous admixture,
the winter’s cozy
regular fixture,
steaming mosaic,
ad-libbed enterprise,
like flannel to bones,
old friend to our eyes.
Yet more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
And thanks also to Anna’s Pizza in Buckroe, Hampton, VA,
creator of this minestrone and presentation thereof.
(Do you, dear reader, like me, have the urge to grab a spoon?)
Oddments 