photography

Fragile

/ marydpierce / 21 Comments

 

one day they will fly

One day soon they will learn to fly.

 

Reflections: 07/08/1990

A night
in the life of us.
Kathy says
she wants credit
for the title.
Okay
I say.
I am easy.
Tommy has always been
easy
or so he thinks.
I think
we are all too
fragile
for real life.

Several days ago my husband discovered a nest containing newly hatched baby robins in our rhododendron bush.  I took a photo with my phone.  I keep looking at the picture, amazed that such tiny creatures are able to survive at all.  How is that even possible?  I mean, look at them.  They have scant feathers and see-through skin.  Their spines are a yellow dotted line down their backs.  They cannot hold their heads upright.

Something in the fragility of these babies made me think of a night long ago. My sister was visiting from Virgina, about to move to California.  My brother was still alive.  I convinced them to go with me to see the movie, Cinema Paradiso — a magical film about childhood and how it shapes who we become. Afterwards, we went to a bar where we drank wine and wrote poetry on paper napkins.  Then we sat in a park, talking into the night until one of us was sober enough to drive home.  I kept all of my napkin poems from that night twenty-four years ago.  Dated and numbered, yellowing and stained; seven of them in all.  I don’t know if my sister still has hers.  I wish I had my brother’s.

I don’t remember what started it, the writing poetry on napkins.  Most likely the wine and the movie, the looking backwards to the past.  Wondering how any of us survive the chaos that comes with growing up?  We were so fragile then, our dreams as transparent as glass.  Our poetry so self-confessional.

But survive, we do, for a time.  Some of us longer than others.

The baby robins are thriving.  Which is a miracle to me.  In five days they have doubled in size.  Their feathers are coming in and there are the shadowy buds of wings that will eventually lift them from their nest.

I hope to bear witness when they do.

Five days old. A crowded house.

Five days old. A crowded house.

What the Heart Wants

/ marydpierce / 18 Comments

stone heart 2

“The heart wants what it wants . . . .”

     ~ Emily Dickinson

The heart wants blood & proper plumbing
valves
un-clogged arteries
electricity thrumming
a steady rhythm.

It’s a muscle
after all
little mouse of soft tissue
no bigger than a fist
wanting us to eschew
the fat
to move ourselves
in vigorous exercise
to breath deeply
of clean air.

A heart cannot live
on metaphors
that speak of love
and longing
words best left
to poets
& to time.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Twist

/ marydpierce / 7 Comments

fforde ffiesta 08 TwistA whirl of caracters rising upward:
a girl in a green dress
a Hawaiian-shirted tourist
a minotaur
two cheese smugglars
mustachioed
horned
and adorned
disguised
and prized
Ffiesta tomffoolery
for the ffun
of it.

The photo was taken at the DeVere Hotel in Swindon, UK, May, 2008.  The occassion was the second Fforde Ffiesta, a gathering for fans of the author, Jasper Fforde.  (You can find out about Jasper Here and Here.) My husband, our son, and I have been attending these events since 2005, because these people are like family; each event has become a family reunion of sorts.  Those of us who consider ourselves members of this wacky, wonderful family are celebrating the fact that this weekend is EXACTLY 12 months away from the next reunion.  We can barely contain our enthusiasm.

Posted as part of the Weekly Photo Challange.

Until a tiny thing trips you up (Flash Fiction)

/ marydpierce / 34 Comments

 

London Eye pm 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a mother in possession of a young child must be in want of a crystal ball.

She wasn’t afraid of anything: Smoldering fire; hail storms of passion; blood-sucking leeches, reeking of desire.  Bring it on.  Her hobnailed boots were made for stomping, and she could dance, by god.  She could move.  She could run long and fast and still have breath enough to laugh in the face of all that friction.  Drive a truck with her old life across country toward her future?  Piece of cake.

She, and the man she knew would never try to change her, made a new life in a place where people lived on fried dough and clams.  A baby arrived one winter morning weighing less than the four-layer fudge cake she was planning for her birthday later; a clear-eyed boy careening headlong into the world so furiously that he took her breath away.

But time is a forward moving thing that cares for no one.  It will not pause for one second, no matter how nicely you ask.  She learned this on a ferris wheel as her child laughed between her husband and herself. The wheel lurched forward and backward, filling and emptying, still moving ever upward, and then slowly around and down, where she asked to be let out.  She walked away and watched as the wheel rolled upwards carrying her heart.

She pictured the wheel collapsing, sending the cars flying through the air, saw her husband and her child (who still believed she could make monsters disappear) hurtling downward while she had chosen to save herself.  She could do nothing to stop the inevitable.  Hobnail boots were useless.

She knew that all she had was now.

 

 

Written for the DP Weekly Writing Challenge: Flash Fiction.  296 painstakingly sculpted words.  The limit was 300.  As is usually the case, I chose the photograph first and let it tell me the story.  Apologies to Jane Austin for the bastardized version of her opening sentence in Pride and Prejudice.

Seasonal lake view

/ marydpierce / 21 Comments

looking glass lake 1

From my bedroom window
I happen to glance out and spot the shroud of sun
spreading it’s last light over the horizon.
Before it melts into the woods beyond the lake —
a lake we can only view through trees bereft of foliage,
from an upstairs window —
I grab my camera to document the thrill
of this single moment.
One in millions throughout my lifetime,
each observed and stored in its own place inside my head,
to be retrieved later (if I can find it) and enjoyed again.

Remember this? I’ll ask myself.  Wasn’t it spectacular?

In truth, it’s not likely I’ll remember
this particular sunset
any more than others I’ve seen,
or the thousand other moments
that caught my eye or my breath,
and made me pause to savor it.
Like our seasonal lake view,
obscured by the fullness of nature,
the brevity of moments like this
get lost
in the plenitudes of life.

That’s what the camera is for.

n.b. April is National Poetry Writing Month.  If you’d like to try your hand at the form, or just read good words, check out these links.  Here and Here.

Into the Forest (a story in 50 words)

/ marydpierce / 54 Comments

 

 

Trees like a beating heart. Trees like a beating heart.

Life was noisy.

Snow fell, and the woods beckoned —

It’s quiet here.  Come in.

Sure-footed, she blazoned forth.

Light slanted through the trees like a promise,

A golden haze whispered, Stay.

Standing beside three trees, red as beating hearts

She found a home inside herself.

Quiet to last a lifetime.

 

n.b.  The photo came first.  I wanted to see whether, not only could I write a story in exactly 50 words, but could I create that story inspired by the photo.  I like a challenge.  Thanks to the WordPress editors for this one.  It took me nearly a week to do it.  Hemingway, I am not.

 

 

 

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Threshold

/ marydpierce / 21 Comments
Looking onto the courtyard of the Louvre.

Looking onto the courtyard of the Musee du Louvre.

 

On the threshold of old and new, past and present; where art meets the political, and clear panes of glass reflect time-worn stone.  The threshold of the Medieval and the Renaissance; Revolution, Restoration, and the Third Republic.  Surviving two World Wars and the ravages of time.

If you’re interested in the Weekly Photo Challenge, you can check it out here.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Object

/ marydpierce / 28 Comments

half face Cardiff 1pmCardiff Bay.
In the dark,
with the noise of
 howling wind and spitting seas
at your back
you stumble and fall
face first
on a braided rug of stones.
Ah, well, lass.  Rest awhile.
No one will mind
if you have a wee nap.
There is time enough
for repair
when you wake.

 While visiting the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, Wales last summer with friends, we passed this lovely woman.  I wondered about her, she looked so peaceful where she was.  Whoever she was, she looks the perfect object for this week’s photo challenge.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition

/ marydpierce / 40 Comments

cemetary & city pmThis morning I thought my death might be imminent.  I hadn’t finished my first cup of coffee yet when the carbon monoxide alarm started beeping.  I called my husband at work.  He didn’t seem too worried, and said he’d come home at lunch. “If I’m dead by the time you get here, you’ll know why,” I told him.

I poured another cup of coffee and turned to the internet.  Then I  called my husband back and told him, never mind.  By then, we’d both figured out that the intermittent beeping meant that the device itself was dying (not me!).  So I ordered a new alarm.

There is nothing that lifts your day so quickly as to think you might be close to death one minute, and discover in the next that, nope.  Not today.

And nothing says juxtaposition like the stones that mark a passing as they stand in witness to the life that carries on.

You can check out the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge here.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Window

/ marydpierce / 16 Comments

Highclere Castle sig 2

Highclere Castle in Hampshire, UK.   Fellow Downton Abbey fans will recognize it as home to the fictional Crawley family and their gaggle of servants.  I was taken with the breadth of all those windows, lined row upon row like mute sentinels — letting in light, while repelling the elements; offering up views of the world outside, while keeping the viewer out of sight.

What I’d really like to know is, who’s responsible for cleaning them?

Interested in the Weekly Photo Challenge?  Check it out here.