days on days on days
One Sunday the astronauts touched back down to earth & we felt that click forward in the wheel of the year as the days began to shorten & the angle of light shifted a little lower in the sky. I walked out to take photographs with my old Holga in the nearly empty streets, looking for signs of life.
I’ve blended frames together cause that’s how the days have felt.
Seven months home in 900 square feet & a little crooked deck of always rearranged plants where I go for air when the skies are not too smokey.
A wall of trumpet vine flowers bursts up & out, climbing the bamboo stalks near our windows. Little red capillaries reaching high to open against a gray or sometimes orange sky… I can tell by the color of the light before I ever smell the smoke. The veins of the vines make a place for wrens to build their nests.
On the very same day humanity shot to the stars & burned home to the ground. Both responses felt perfectly valid for people living in “these unprecedented times”.
We listened to “Alabama” again. This time I learned that the notes Coltrane chose were based on the sound of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice as he gave the eulogy for those four little girls. I hadn’t known cause I hadn’t paid proper attention. Layers of knowledge on sound & beauty on pain & days on days on days. Names on names on names.
The hummingbirds buzz to the feeders again & again while down the street the magnolia trees open wide, waxy petals like saucers of cream. Craig said, “imagine you catch on to the patterns of nature somewhere in your twenties… that means you might only see those blooms some 50 more times… that’s not very many.”
There’s an open flow of thought & love but it funnels to a sticking point in my throat… so for months I listen instead of talk.
So much of expression & survival is breath & the supply of it seems so limited these days.
So much of life is channeled through that narrow passageway that joins the mind & heart.
Image shot on Kodak professional film | Processing & Scanning by Richard Photo Lab.