Patiently waiting for the perfect light.
Glassy lake, wind, clouds, perfection’s near
as the moment dwindles into night.

Captured moments prove that you’re alive, a height
of feeling between depths of time and fear
that living casts only imperfect light.

But the moment missed is like a face out of sight
that against all logic you hope will appear
from around a corner, framed by the night.

Technology offers consolation in its sleight
of hand:  Digitally correct the analog here
and now, counterfeit the perfect light.

Yet you want more than the remastered byte.
You want the flash between waiting and souvenir,
Self and spectacle fused, reality felt right.

And so you wait for what’s passing out of sight,
the collision between soon and too late, sheer
threads connecting to the perfect light
before the moment dwindles into night.

Fragrant fields

invoke your opening shutter:

you build stamens into white resonance.



With the tilt of the lens

you hold back your breath

to halt the photo-blur.



The army of slime mold cells below

silently begins its glacial escape

as your mouth softens in anticipation

of capturing a pristine moment.



The scattered forest tops

shade your eyebrows

with the vertical upheaval

of decades-young canopy.



Can you see? In the clock-stop

stillness of a camera’s blinking eye

you tighten your grip on yourself

while still kneeling lightly

on the floors of nature.



Thus you open places that appear

all at once before you,

and culminate in the narrow beak of a winter bird

that rests momentarily on your shovel

before gratefully returning

to the archeological dig near your feet,

where it exhumes, then eats,

its breakfast of worms.

never has the sky looked down
and declared that today,
dreamers must find new sights to see;
that birds must find
new places to be.

never has the sky decided
that a million wires
are enough lines to cut across
its silken expanses,
he always makes room for more -
neatly dividing spaces
that everyone is allowed to
dream in.

and so you ask me,
why the wires to cut in
to his beauty?

and i'll say,
it's because he knows exactly
how they carry words to him,
which may otherwise
never be said again.

I say nothing is heavier
then it’s fifteen to ten
pounds,
as I stuff it in
a backpack
for carrying
to stare at the air
of deep despair
there in.

Photo after photo
clicking and clacking
with predatory pain
that is ready to claim
my comfort,
ready to strain
this tired brain
with the terror
of its truths.

After days
of lugging it around
I have found
the one thing heavier
is the horror
of enlightenment
that resides
behind the page.

The way
it burrows
within
my skin
to the source
of my emotions
and makes me feel
something more
for the suffering
children
who are starving,
the poverty stricken
oppressed by
wars of hate, and greed,
wars that partially stem
from various religions.

You’re a flipped mirror upside wrong, right side right where you don’t belong,
Can’t tell where the end begins,
The horizon is the only thing that lives,
Unless the bottom drops out into a free fall heaven,
Taking with it the hopes that the reflection could be more than a hand made inception.
Let me fall back into my own right side wrong.
I wanna be in the background that finds its basis in the foreground,
So maybe I’d believe that the beauty exists in me,
So maybe the creativity could set me free.