A friend and I are doing this weekly project to try and help keep our creative juices pumping when we don't have classes or professors to keep up on target. Basically we make up assignments to do during the week and it is due on Friday (cause creative kids need deadlines in order for things to leave our heads and sketchbooks and actually become anything truly tangible). This is our first go at it and the challenge (or whatever you want to call it) was rain. Since writing helps me get to the point of shooting I tend to do poem type things (especially lately) sometimes I think the writings are actually better than the images themselves - but perhaps that has more to do with my ignorance of what makes a good poem than anything else.
Regardless. What follows are excerpts from my journal as I have contemplated rain this week ....
cleansing and exposing
pounding away at the earth,
revealing the hidden things
the lost things encased by years of sediment
millennium of sand weighing in on
the priceless articles of our past
surrounding
safe in this embrace from
the tell-tell signs of progress
safe from the landfills and housing developments
safe in the sediment
held close
close in the Earth’s bosom until
its age is come
we are ready to care about it
freedom rain bounds
it breaks up the suffocating embrace
brings light to the hidden thing, kept safe
from disregard while it was common, age has made it precious
gentle scraping of excavation
finishing what the onslaught of water began
back and forth, back and forth the brush
tenderly methodical
releasing the hidden thing
once overlooked
disregarded, now precious
tools created just for its preservation, elated
we gaze upon it
ponder the way it was before
the earth encased it
clasped in protective sediment
then it was glorious
but common,
unappericated
now degraded,
but elated
freed by the rain to
shine in aged deterioration
adored in decay
08 May 13
***
What hidden things am I beginning to be ready to appreciate? Maybe the rain has not yet revealed the hidden thing, I am not yet ready to appreciate.
***
I sit on the porch that isn’t mine, and I
contemplate this bottle
already removed, the small plastic seal
clear fades to rich translucent brown
punctuated by letters proclaiming DARK CHOCOLATE MOCHA
it sits on the couch, my bed
while I in the rocking chair
writing
my dark chocolate mocha in my lap
writing and postponing
the leaves rustle
a motor hums
metal clacks
an indistinct mummer ebbs and flows from neighboring yards
and the birds carry on with their singing
all are unaware of
This moment
the sacredness of this bottle I hold
in my laps as I sit
in the rocking chair on the pouch not belonging to me
this precious mocha
this last of twelve
This was mean for a time where I could feel
closure
as if I could somehow “deal with it”
and then celebrate with a sip of this deliciousness
the ‘best by’ stamp stares up at me
giving me two months
two months
yet I know to wait is not what is needed
to wait is
to make this harder
the lid pops and slowly I unscrew it
setting it down on the adjacent page
I hold my lips to the bottle and
breath it in rather than drink it
I tip it into my parched mouth and savor
the tiniest of sips only to
let it lower
and my hand write some more
Another sip, one with gusto
the threshold is passed and the
power of the bottle is broken
I am no further from my
precious Mary Alice than I ever was
she is not in the physical things she
touched or
gave to me
She is most completely hidden in Christ and That
is her true legacy
the love that holds her and
is wrapped around us both
That is where I need to cling – not on
the artifacts of this life
imperfect
inconstant
this is my hidden thing of great value
so obvious yet so hidden until
the flood of my eyes and
this delightful coffee made me stumble
in the hidden secret
common
discarded
revealed
revered
08 May 14
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