Haruki Murakami – “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
after Lauds when
first light touched
cliffs to the west
I rolled a stump
to the Chama River
to sit and pray
alone with just
blue bottle flies
and once the day
seemed certain
wary cattle wandered
past me like men
turned out of a shelter
robed in blankets and
dismayed by the light
and length of day
Chama Valley Daybreak – September 2018
The patient, human work of sitting and talking and being understood on paper. How different from the camera! I am incurably camera shy! The awful instantaneous snapshot of pose, of falsity, eternalized. Like the pessimistic, anguished view of judgement that so many mad Christians have – the cruel candid shot of you when you have just done something transient but hateful. As if this could be truth. Judgement really a patient, organic, long-suffering understanding of the man’s whole life, of everything in it, all in context. – Journal entry, November 17, 1961
Steam is reliable.
photo: Lewiston, Maine – November 2013
photo: Falmouth, ME Town Landing, November 2014
In the world you will have troubles; but be brave, I have overcome the world. – John 16:33
We need some pines to assuage the darkness when it blankets the mind, we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly as a plane’s wing, and a worn bed of needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind, and a blur or two of a wild thing that sees and is not seen. We need these things between appointments, after work, and, if we keep them, then someone someday, lying down after a walk and supper, with the fire hole wet down, the whole night sky set at a particular time, without numbers or hours, will cause a little sound of thanks—a zipper or a snap— to close round the moment and the thought of whatever good we did.
Photo: Portland, ME – February 2016
Grant us wisdom and innocence of life.
Prego – Ingrid Wendt
Ask for something, Per
favore, please, the answer is
Prego. Please.
Thank you, Grazie, thank you,
you say. Instead of you’re welcome?
Prego. The answer is please.
Prego, listen, here in Italy, every
time you think you’re polite, this lift
of the verbal eyebrow, this rise
and fall of the voice like a hand
on its way to your shoulder, insistent
lifeline picking you up,
letting you go
again. No problem! Prego
pulls up the covers and tucks you in.
Cape of Saint Martin. Communion
wafer on each Italian tongue. Prego.
Please, Prego, I pray to you,
Prego, don’t
worry. Let me
do something for you.
(Photo: Assisi, 2002)
