Poems and Photos and Rain

It's the first day of spring, and we are wind-whipped and rain-drenched, and I am not complaining one whit about it.  For Lent, I have been working through a contemplative photography course, offered by Christine at Abbey of the Arts.  You can see some of the images I've been receiving and reflecting upon at Flickr.  For this week, she gave us a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye (click here to read it), and what I took away from the poem, among its lovely images, was this line:  "Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us / we find poems."  Then I wrote one in personal response.


Poems Hide




The poem today rests

in my lower back, which aches from sitting to write too much

(too much sitting? too much writing?);

in the painful vein on the back of my thigh just above my knee,

a veiny area that feels it might burst;

in my wet cat, caught in the raingale,

dabbed dampdry with a half-used napkin from dinner;

in the attractive silvering hair of our tax lady,

with her black Volvo and black laptop;

in the alto deeps of Amy Grant on the iPod

whose albums have been on repeat for two months;

in the raindrops on the louvered windowpanes,

drops oranged by the sodium streetlight just outside

on the curb in which flow rainstreams with yellow pollen edges.

Tonight I reinvent the fwump and revving of the furnace motor

as it blows warming air only to the top floor of our home,

find the poem in the cornbread from a mix,

sweet like cake and crusty brown on the edges from cooking two minutes too long,

in the whiny mournful cat who does not want to go outside and does not want to stay in,

in the cooling wind that enters my inefficient home to blow the curtains and the edge of the rug,

in the chore of laundry that affords warm time for prayers as I fold underwear and socks.

Perhaps I will even find the poem in the ungraded papers that sit atop my table

and weigh me down with guilt and self-criticism.

Big Pic Story

I think today, instead of posting a photo (I should have some photo365+1 extra credit by now), I'll tell my story about the pic that got away. We all have these, don't we? The ones we could've/would've/should've gotten, but...we didn't have the camera, or the camera battery had died, or we ran out of film/memory, or the lighting was just too bad....

My dear friend, Madame X, and I were having yet another late night at school. When it was time for a dinner run, she popped over to my classroom on the opposite end of the universe, we hopped into her jett-y, and sped away to the nearest Wendy's for chicken sandwiches. As we emerged from the school parking lot, however, our eyes were drawn to the same ghastly vision. We hadn't even pulled from the middle turning lane into a normal driving lane before the garish colors began to materialize into clarity. It was trash day in our OC hamlet. The unnatural colors emanated from one trash can at the curb of a nearby apartment building.

It took a few moments before our minds registered what said spectacle actually was. You know how, when you have a car accident, your mind and memory register the event in slow motion, even though it only took split seconds to occur? It couldn't have taken us more than two seconds to drive past the overstuffed trash bin, but it feels as though the moment lasted ten times that. Madame X and I both glanced at the compelling colors sticking up out of the bin, and we registered its true form simultanously. It was a plastic, blond, lipstick-O-mouthed blow-up sex doll, partially deflated (I shudder to think why); a body, abandoned in a dumpster. Trashy indeed.

Cackles and howls of shocked recognition and laughter filled the jett-y. OMG, a photo op if I've ever seen one! But alas, I had left my camera at home! Nooooo! I had only my cell phone with its crappy camera, but something was better than nothing. But by the time we had processed this information, we were already through the intersection with a changing light on our heels. We vowed to stop by the serendipitous scene on our return from Wendy's. But again alas, on our way back, with hot, pungent sandwiches in hand, the jett-y filled with stomach-teasing temptations, Madame X refused to stop -- "We should," she said, as she shifted gears, sailed past, and turned into the parking lot. I blame her for the one that got away. (It was this big!)

Waah!

I lost the little plastic thingie that covers my dSLR viewing screen. Now I'm terrified I'll scratch it. Must go buy a replacement now.

It really is time...

...for an upgrade. I need a backup battery, too. Sad.

I'm sleepy, soul-wrung, and half-conscious, so I'll be brief tonight. (Shocking, given my track record, I know.) 'Night, all. (Going to Mary Oliver tomorrow! I'll write about it on Sunday.)

Nice Story...

...on Mary Oliver and her late partner, Molly Malone Cook. Oliver is publishing a book of Cook's photos. Cool!

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-reynolds6jan06,0,5486849.story?coll=la-books-center
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