Saturday, June 3, 2017

Still

Somewhere in Durham, NC, 1982

I recently found a bunch of letters from friends and lovers in a box at the back of my closet. I also found a trove of negatives from a documentary photography class I took as a sophomore at UNC in 1982. I'd forgotten about the family that I visited over a period of three months and chronicled and with whom I became friends. I moved away. Still I remember developing them in the darkroom, my hands immersed in the bath, the slippery feel of the paper blooming shadows and light, the hands of the boy I loved mixed up with mine, his mouth.

Saturday morning. Complacencies of the peignoir.

Still. What makes me "happy" is fifteen minutes in bed meditating, then reading about authors I love and their new books, then hearing Sophie in the room down the hall humming again after more than a month of silence. Also, Costa Rican coffee from the man I love who is out there somewhere taking photos of burrowing owls.











Field Guide

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious dement of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That's all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Tony Hoagland

7 comments:

  1. I love this and you. Also I want to
    HNg with him one day capturing images of birds. ❤

    ReplyDelete
  2. You have always been an artist, gifted in so many mediums, and now you know you don't have to choose, you express them all. Love.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow! What a great find! I would love to see more of those photos! I took a photojournalism class in college and I discarded the negatives long ago. I have often regretted not having them now, even though I'm sure the pictures were terrible.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This photo is beautiful; I had no idea that you've been behind the lens for so many years. But the photos you post here are always so artistic that I should have presumed it!
    And congratulations on Henry's graduation. He seems like such an impressive young man in every way. (I'm especially partial to his tenderness towards Sophie)

    ReplyDelete

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