Posts from the “Photo Poetry” Category

DSC00201-Goslings-by-Daylesford-Lake-Oct2015

“The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue . . . ” Bruno Bettelheim, from The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. Published December 1986 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (First published 1975.)

We Pay Our Fare in Apples Here
by Megan Arkenberg

Everything in this station has a story, he said.
The walls are curved in such a way that the echo
of a penny dropped in the exact center of the tunnel
sounds like an apology from your late father.
If you crawl beneath the turnstiles in the wrong direction
the next train you board will take you
to every place you’ve ever forgotten,
and the ride will last for seven years.
One time, a woman fell off this platform
and touched the edge of a rail.
She turned into a swan.
Commuters find feathers in their briefcases,
sometimes. They always smell like summer.

Photos taken by Robin Whittle, at Lake Daylesford, October 2015.

Poem source here.

A tree forms itself

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 16, 2016

Winter, Spring
by Jim Harrison

Winter is black and beige down here
from drought. Suddenly in March
there’s a good rain and in a couple
of weeks we are enveloped in green.
Green everywhere in the mesquites, oaks,
cottonwoods, the bowers of thick
willow bushes the warblers love
for reasons of food or the branches,
the tiny aphids they eat with relish.

Each year it is a surprise
that the world can turn green again.
It is the grandest surprise in life,
the birds coming back from the south to my open
arms, which they fly past, aiming at the feeders.

Sabbaths IV (1999)
by Wendell Berry

What a consolation it is, after
the explanations and the predictions

of further explanations still
to come, to return unpersuaded
to the woods, entering again
the presence of the blessed trees.
A tree forms itself in answer
to its place and to the light.

Explain it how you will, the only

thing explainable will be
your explanation. There is
in the woods on a summer’s

morning, birdsong all around
from guess where, nowhere
that rigid measure which predicts

only humankind’s demise.

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

Some Days, by Billy Collins

td Whittle

Posted on February 3, 2015

Artist: Laurie Simmons, from the Disturbing Innocence group show at FLAG Art Foundation. Curated by Eric Fischl. Oct 25, 2014 - Jan 31, 2015.

Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs, 
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next 
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds, 
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

“Some Days” from Picnic, Lightning, by Billy Collins, © 1998, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. The image above is of a work by Laurie Simmons, from the Disturbing Innocence group show at FLAG Art Foundation. Curated by Eric Fischl. Oct 25, 2014 - Jan 31, 2015.

The Cats Will Know

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on August 26, 2014

girl under oversized umbrella reading a book

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
~ C.S. Lewis

Rain will fall again

on your smooth pavement,

a light rain like

a breath or a step.

The breeze and the dawn

will flourish again

when you return,

as if beneath your step.

Between flowers and sills

the cats will know.

There will be other days,

there will be other voices.

You will smile alone.

The cats will know.

You will hear words

old and spent and useless

like costumes left over

from yesterday’s parties.

You too will make gestures.

You’ll answer with words—

face of springtime,

you too will make gestures.

The cats will know,

face of springtime;

and the light rain

and the hyacinth dawn

that wrench the heart of him

who hopes no more for you—

they are the sad smile

you smile by yourself.

There will be other days,

other voices and renewals.

Face of springtime,

we will suffer at daybreak.

by Cesare Pavese

translated by Geoffrey Brock

Our two souls therefore, which are one

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on July 15, 2014

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

that is your home

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on June 29, 2014

repeat after me:

in the three thousand one hundred and eighth copy

of the third edition of halldór laxness’s novel independent people

bjartur í sumarhúsum is called karlotta mayer

all the bus tickets in rio

all the lower lips in kirkut

all the coat hangers in basle

− when I awake all this shall be yours!

where the Plough is reflected in the soup spoon

− that is your home

when the flea and the blue whale meet in the encyclopaedia

they are the same size

when the colours vanish from the national flags

the earth begins to flutter

from all the things we learn in the sixty-eighth form by Sjón

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

and I was happy

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on June 23, 2014

The Copper Beech

by Marie Howe

Immense, entirely itself,

it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it

and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell

darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the beaches,

I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

Sheltered

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on April 26, 2014

Creo que si … I believe

it will rain

tomorrow … I believe

the son of a bitch

is going into the river …

I believe All men are

created equal–By your

leave a leafy

shelter over the exposed

person–I’m a

believer creature

of habit but without

out there a void of

pattern older

older the broken

pieces no longer

salvageable bits

but incommensurate

chips yet must

get it back together.

…

As it gets now impossible

to say, it’s your hand

I hold to, still

your hand.

from Creo by Robert Creeley

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

Frozen

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 4, 2014

The street was white again,

all the bushes covered with heavy snow

and the trees glittering, encased with ice.

I lay in the dark, waiting for the night to end.

It seemed the longest night I had ever known,

longer than the night I was born.

I write about you all the time, I said aloud.

Every time I say “I,” it refers to you.

~from Visitors from Abroad by Louise Gluck,

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on February 17, 2014

The bud

stands for all things,

even those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing it’s loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing

~from Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

*****

Photo by Sandra Peterson Ramirez.

Posts from the “Photo Poetry” Category

On things unreal, but true.

td Whittle

Posted on April 18, 2016

A tree forms itself

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 16, 2016

Some Days, by Billy Collins

td Whittle

Posted on February 3, 2015

The Cats Will Know

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on August 26, 2014

Our two souls therefore, which are one

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on July 15, 2014

that is your home

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on June 29, 2014

and I was happy

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on June 23, 2014

Sheltered

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on April 26, 2014

Frozen

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on March 4, 2014

sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness

Sandra Peterson Ramirez

Posted on February 17, 2014