poetry

mirrors

“Our mind is a painter, it paints all kinds of wonderful things, which are nothing more than the objects of our imagination. We create images to love, to crave, to be angry with, and to hate. It is our mind, our perceptions, that create these images. All perceptions are wrong perceptions. If a perception is not wrong, we call it understanding or wisdom.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh (The Other Shore)

Nikon D750 f/5 1/400s 70mm 140 ISO

Alas! the waving moss deceived your vision. 
The clear mirror* is never tarnished: 
Therefore look deep. ~ Lady Sakyo (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

*The mirror is the symbol of the soul of a Japanese woman

remembrance of her…

“For remembrance of her I wanted to write about her,”… but I stopped short with the words, “Ink seems to have frozen up, I cannot write any more.” *

How shall I gather memories of my sister?

The stream of letters is congealed. 

No comfort may be found in icicles 

  ~The Sarashina Diary (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

Nikon D750 f/4.5 1/400 58mm

*The continuous writing of the cursive Japanese characters is often compared to a meandering river. “Ink seems to have frozen up” means that her eyes are dim with tears, and no more she can write continuously and flowingly.

lens-artist photo challenge: nature

spring breeze–
the pine on the ridge
whispers it ~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)

Horsetooth Reservoir … f/5.6 1/2000s 300mm 2200 ISO

“[Frank Meadow] Sutclifffe rarely left Whitby, where his portrait studio kept him busy, and said that we was ‘tethered for the greater part of each year by a chain, at the most only a mile or two long.’ To most modern photographers this would seem a crippling restriction, but Shutcliffe gradually realized that is was an asset to him as a photographer since it forced him to concentrate on the transitory effects that would transform familiar scenes.” (cited: Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, the Aperture History of Photography Series: Aperture 1979

While I dreamed of traveling during those long-hours filled with work and family responsibilities, I find that Frank Shutcliffe’s creative work serves to move me toward greater acceptance of being “tethered” during this retirement period with the challenge to open myself to the “transitory effects” of nature that transforms the landscape close to home.

Image, haiku, and excerpt from Aperture submitted in response to Patti’s (P. A. Moed) lens-artists photo challenge: nature.