Photography

In Praise of the Quiet Dads

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Bob with Jordan shadow

Gazing at your infant son as he locks eyes on you, both of you as yet unused to such amazement.  The reverence of such a moment.  This is what you signed up for.   This is what sustains you through long nights of wakefulness and days of wondering whether you’re doing it right–this parenting business–so necessary to keep the world chugging forward into a brighter future for us all.

What a hefty weight a parent bears.

Here.  Let me remind you of the connection you made, long ago as it was.

Let me show you how you have loved.

 

p.s.  Sorry about the coffee.

 

Breath

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Breath

Years ago I sighed suddenly.
A quick, unexpected breath that snagged in my throat
like a small bird tangled in a net.
It kept happening after that.
Occasionally, and out of nowhere.
The sighs audible, gasping; a short stuttering note of surprise.

I have searched for a reason
this should happen.  Wondering
what I had done to annoy
my own breath that it would sound
so exasperated with me?
I recently discovered that I hold my breath

when I am concentrating
on some inconsequential task.
While someone is drawing their last
breath I unconsciously hold mine.
A child is born and gulps a first breath
then wails from the surprise of it.

Isn’t that the way breath
is meant to be?
Rolling in and out endlessly
like ocean waves taking us ever further out
until at last, we lose sight
of the distant shore.

It’s Spring: A Poem and a Light-hearted Lament

/ marydpierce / 16 Comments
A pretty yellow flower that says heralds spring.

Photo of a pretty yellow flower to herald spring.

Spring has well and truly sprung where I live.  The sun beams beatifically while a bellicose wind is determined to huff and puff the few remaining days of March.  In the background, my husband’s chainsaw gnaws through a pile of downed tree limbs — winter’s detritus.

Today is my husband’s birthday.  (Happy birthday, Bob.)

In a couple of days it will be April, which is National Poetry Month.  I love poetry as much as I love spring.  On spring mornings rife with sun, I often think of Wordsworth. Specifically the following:

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

I learned this poem many years ago when I was still the Child.  A few years ago, while thinking on Wordsworth, I jotted down a response to My Heart Leaps Up.

My heart despaired when I beheld
A codger in the dell:
So was it that my life began;
Yet here I am without a plan,
Fast closing in on next-to-dead.
Oh, bugger hell!
And I could wish my days to crawl
Before I have to chuck it all.

I must have been in a funky mood when I wrote that ditty.  In my defense, the too swift passing of time has been an obsession with me since I was about eight, and the only way around it is to poke fun of myself, which is what I am doing here.  (Plus, I do love the word codger.)

So, welcome to another spring; to young men’s (and women’s) fancy; to love and poetry.  Welcome, welcome, welcome all!

Vernal Blossom

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vernal blossom

Yesterday was the first day of spring.  I found this lone flower blooming in a pot of greenery by my kitchen window.  Isn’t it lovely?  Oh, harbinger of new and reawakening life.  Oh, beacon of joy.  This is the stuff that stirs poets to pen.

Except that this is my Thanksgiving cactus which ordinarily produces its pink-tinged blossoms and white translucent wings in November, and it did not disappoint four months ago when it was awash with blooms.  In all the years that I have had it, it has never flowered in spring.  Nor has it ever only presented a single bloom.

This morning there was snow.  By the afternoon it was gone.  Harbinger of doom?  Who knows?  I do think we should all hang on to our hats; come summer we may be in for a hot, bumpy ride.

 

On the Way: Window Dressing

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I’ve been traveling around England for a little over a week.  Today I’m in London.  My husband and I have logged some miles walking and today was windy and cool, so I wanted to head back to our hotel early.  On the way we walked past Selfridges.  Some of the window arrangements caught my eye, and for a few minutes I forgot about being tired and cranky.

This spring we watched the weekly PBS presentation of Mr. Selfridge.  I imagine that Harry Selfridge would approve of this display for the Apple iWatch.  I love how all the elements of this design — the butterflies changing color and suspended from thin filaments, the watches on pedestals rising from the bottom — meld with the reflections of sky and the wonderful glass building across the street to create something quite fanciful.

  

Into the woods

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creepy woods 2

I’m off on an adventure, but I’ll be back soon.  You may wait in the heart of the Night-Light Forest while I’m away.  It’s lovely here.  If you squint your eyes, you can just make out the shadowy figures of creatures who are too shy to show themselves.  They hum the same soft tune and sway to the music they make.  The light show was created for them.  They love the lights — O glorious light!  Magnificent bursts of phosphorescence; the sky is awash with color.

If you chose to spend time here, be respectful.  No hooting and hollering lest you disturb the serenity.  Don’t trod on anyone’s feet.  Feel free to hum along, though, once you’ve deciphered the tune. If you must snack, pick up after yourself.  And if you happen to see Betsy, tell her the thing she most wants to know is skulking around here somewhere.

I’ll see you all when I return.  If you’re good I may bring you a little something.  Maybe chocolate, maybe not.  It’s a surprise.

Everyone loves a surprise.

A poem in every pocket

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poem in every pocket

Today is National Poem in Your Pocket Day.  I love that this is a thing now.  I love poems, all manner of them, short, long, rhyming, oblique.  Each poem is a wrapped piece of candy I can never get enough of.  The idea of NPIYPD is that you carry a poem in your pocket to share with others.  I didn’t leave my house today, so I’ll use this post as my pocket.

A Poem in Every Pocket

Imagine a plaza
where some people sit on squat pedestals,
and some people are
talking/walking/milling about,
but all are carrying this secret:
that their pockets are filled
with poems only they
know all the words to.

— Mary Pierce

That is my little poem.  It is also my wish.  If you have a poem you are carrying around today I’d love it if you would share it with me.

To hell with the Vicodin

/ marydpierce / 44 Comments

cape cod kayak

 

I start things, I don’t always finish them.  At least in a timely manner.  I have a lot of drafts in my WordPress folder.  The way I work is, I get an idea, usually a sentence or a title, or I look at one of my photos and it spurs something.  But, the two things — a few words and an image — always go together in my mind.  That’s how I roll.  Often I get several sentences down, maybe even a paragraph or two, before I leave it.  That way I have something to pick up on when I come back.

You can imagine my confusion when I opened this draft and found the title with this particular photo and nothing else.  Not one word.  What does Vicodin have to do with a placid scene of two guys fishing from kayaks in a cove on Cape Cod?  What WAS I thinking when I dropped this here?  Anyone?

And before you ask, no I wasn’t on Vicodin when I began the piece.  That was the point of the title.  I do remember that.  Because I had tried to have a prescription for it filled, along with an antibiotic after a grueling oral surgery last October.  And an older woman who reminded me of my high school Math teacher, Mrs. Burns (a woman so terrifying that the French teacher across the hall once put a sign on his door that read:  First Aid for Lethal Burns) looked at my prescriptions and then told me all the reasons why the Vicodin scrip couldn’t be filled.  Something to do with changes in dosage — of the acetaminophen, not even the narcotic part of it — and my oral surgeon should have known that.  No, I couldn’t just have his office call it in because it was a Class 3 drug, I would have to go back to the office, a 70-minute roundtrip drive away, and have the doctor write a new prescription.  And my mouth was swollen and starting to hurt, and I was thinking, to hell with the Vicodin.  Which completely makes sense now that I’ve explained it to you doesn’t it?

Except for the photograph.

Your guess is as good as mine.  I welcome your suggestions.

Ephemeral

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Ephemeral

I love the word, ephemeral.  It’s a wisp of a word that flies out of my mouth on fairy wings and disappears the moment it is said.  I love the fleetingness of it, the here-one-moment-gone-the-next thrill of saying it aloud.

That I was able to capture this sunset was also a thrill.  I hadn’t planned on it.  My husband and I were simply driving to meet some friends, and there it was, the trees along the way stretching their arms up in halleluja, singing the sun’s praises.  Will you look at that, they seemed to say.  Isn’t it glorious?  It was, indeed.  Seconds after I got this shot, the gold blister of sun was replaced by a thin stitch of orange along the horizon line.  The yellow glow was gone.

And so were we.

Inspired by the Weekly Photo Challenge which can be found here.

Between, & all the years that have passed since then

/ marydpierce / 20 Comments
In a kingdom far away

In a kingdom far away

BETWEEN

I wanted a red dress and wide hips —
the better to love with
not necessarily for birthing babies
as those books
would have us believe
their pages filled with
elastic wombs & embryos,
miniature aliens placed there
by god knows what.
Desire.  Was that it?

Motherhood has since selected
something more suitable
for me to wear.
responsibility and self-sacrifice
in a durable weave,
stains wash out easily.
Count on cotton
I hear in my head,
a titter made sonorous
in the hollow of sleepless nights.

Swaddled in flannel with pink rosettes
I dream of a tight red dress
warm breath in my hair
probing fingers
so many places to search for comfort
or passion.
Desire and need are not the same things.
My thighs have grown soft.
I remember when they were taut,
sprawled heedlessly on the edge of caring.

I perched there for a time,
between
the dream and waking,
between
desire and duty,
rivers of doubt flowing on either side.
I stared into the abyss
and leapt anyway.

~~~ written 1995

So, yeah . . . here’s a thing.  I’ve had a stack of old floppy disks sitting in a drawer forever.  A few days ago I bought an external floppy disk drive so that I could finally access the content.  One of the disks was just labeled Poems.  A few of them, like this one here, I hadn’t remembered even writing.  My son was six when I wrote this.  I was busy, probably tired as hell.

There are short stories I forgot about, ideas for children’s books, more poems. I’ll probably go through them slowly, savoring them.  Try to recall where my head was at the time.  It’s a little like finding a trove of letters from someone you used to know, but haven’t seen in a really, really long time.

Could be interesting.