Monday, February 27, 2012

flight










if i were the movement of a raven's wings through the falling snow
not the raven
not the snow
only the movement


Thursday, February 23, 2012

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.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Monday, February 13, 2012

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

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

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


Friday, February 3, 2012

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]