flight

if i were the movement of a raven's wings through the falling snow

not the raven

not the snow

only the movement

winter grass

February

Then, later in the afternoon, after crossing the white fields,
we step together over a berm of snow beside the common road
where wind gleams in the sinuosities of tall winter grass.
Daylight clings close to the bone, here,
and sweetens the marrow of the lengthening afternoon
even as shadows bulk out from the boles of pines.
The tufts of sinewy, thin blades rub and delay the shine,
exactly as the fibrous sheaf of the body defers the spirit’s passage
back to the earth, exactly so, to slow its arrival --
or, if there is no spirit, to clutch fire in the tangled atoms
for a moment longer, before they slack apart and fall again
through the void. Already we lean toward evening.
We touch the rustling stems as roughly as the wind
and hurry home to uncover warm skin, to offer, here, always here --
here, where I kneel before the tender gate of my lover’s womb.

the house at the edge of the swamp

by the frozen lake

real

definitions from Vilém Flusser's Towards a Philosophy of Photography



photographer: a person who attempts to place, within the image, information that is not predicted within the program of the camera

Chicago, Feb. 2011

translation: switching over from one code to another; hence,jumping from one universe to another

inside Notre Dame, Paris, July 2011

code: a sign system arranged in a regular pattern

roadside, La Porte County, Indiana, July 2011

reality: what we run up against on our journey toward death; hence, that which interests us

Manitoulin Island, Ontario, January 2012

dharmata / sunyata

chicago, from the train

this photo is from last february, a year ago

i go there today, an alien environment for me, so far from my natural habitat

i will wander

i will watch people

i will fade on streets where i have never faded before

a new breathfield

Now let it be time that gods step forth

from dwelt-in things ...

Time they knock down every wall

in my house. New page. Only the wind

stirred by such a page turning

could shovel air as a spade turns earth:

a new breathfield. Oh gods, gods!

You who came so often, sleepers inside things,

who cheerfully arise -- who, by wells 

that we guess at, wash face and neck

and lightly add your repose

to that which seems full, our own life.

May it again be your morning, gods.

We repeat. You alone are source.

The world arises with you, and origin shines

on all the cracks in our failures ...

Rainer Maria Rilke, late untitled fragment

[mostly Edward Snow's translation from Uncollected Poems, with my own revisions to Snow's version]