January 1, 2025: A New Ordeal in Pictures

                                                         

                                                                    Good Evening One and All

                                                                          January 1, 2025

    Here we are in 2025, this century is a quarter century old.  How can that be?  And when will I get used to time?  Probably never.  

    I've kept a blog during several years in the past 15.  I started in 2010 when I knew my mother was dying and I felt I needed to document the year.  So much happened that year.  So much of my energy was put into my photography even though I did fall ill that autumn.  But my photography began to take on a life of its own and it has continued ever since.

    In 2024 I published my book, Spirits of the Rookery, a collection of poems and photographs I took at a single rookery over a two year time span.  At first, in 2022 I had a show of the photos I took during the first 2 years of COVID.  I focused on the rookery as a kind of research project to keep me involved and not in despair.   During the show I had a poetry reading and shared poems I wrote at the rookery.  People convinced me to make it into a book.  It took 2 years, but it's out there and you can buy it on Amazon.

                    

    Now I will go back to my blogging.  I have such an odd relationship with fb.  I've been posting photos on my wall for 17 years.  I constantly worry about them and I constantly fear that I belittle them by sharing them on that platform.  This year I'm giving into my gut to ask people to open a link to see my pictures.  This also gives people not on Facebook the opportunity to see them, too.

                            

    It also allows me to share more of poetry and other writings.  I am working on a new manuscript for a full length poetry collection.  I want to get my play out into the world.  And I have an idea for a new oral history project concerning the use of music in community development and social justice work.  So look for installments of these projects.

    Tonight I will post today's pictures and a recent poem. 

     

Securing the Tear

 

I have worked for the past

three years to describe

what your touch does for me;

why I’m in love with your hands.

How I know you heal

the tear in my chest

with pressure placed

by/through your fingers.

 

I have worked to describe

the moment of peace

I feel while my systems

rest, where their perfect

state stands, my nerves still

my heart quiet

explosions dormant

not needed.

 

How may I bottle this

to sip upon when needed?

I don’t need you to kill the bear

or catch my food,

protect me from any harm.

I need you to touch

my inner core

the pit of my soul

 give it that quiet, still moan.

 

That must have been true from the beginning.

when you were a boy, spry,

your shaman presence

and my witchiness

must have known each other

from a long time ago.

 

What’s left is this simple craving

for touch through hands that hold

between my lines.  Holding between

then and now, carefully, silently,

 securing the tear.