monochrome photography

life’s passages … 22

sunday morning with Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

“… She was staring into the lake, watching the snow as it reached the black water and then vanished. As if the snow never existed. How nature teaches the same thing again and again, she thought. Yet it was so beautiful, the silence, the drift of the snow down from the heavens, the disappearance of each flake as it touched the surface of the lake. Surely they live on, she thought.” ~The Snow Fox, pg. 94

life’s passages … 6

wednesday morning with Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

“… And there the mist refuses to part again over that time in their lives, and for a long time, I know nothing about them. Life is like that, a book left in the rain, ink erase by water, entire chapters disappearing. And then the story continues, and you must imagine the missing chapters that went before. Rest assured, it has continued, their story, although no one was there to let me read it. But since I began to write, I have come to know the rest of it, and so I will write it down. …”*

*cited: Susan Fromberg Schaeffe, Snow Fox, pg. 172

crown of leaves

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map leads him there.
Or perhaps memory. Once long ago in the sun,
When snow first fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast in motion.
He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I. ~Czeslaw Milosz*

*cited: Trans. Robert Haas. Poetry-Chaikhana.com Sacred Poetry from Around the World