This
morning I felt so absent minded. Twice before 8 am I wasn’t where I was
supposed to be. I ended up racing out the door, late, to meet with my friend at
Dagny’s so we could both decompress, separately together. I tried to grab my
camera before I left because the sky was so beautiful but it absentmindedly
found its way out of my purse.
At one
point I looked into her hot chocolate and said, “if this was a normal day, I
would photograph the way the chocolate sauce looks like Asian lettering. What
does it say to you?”
She
laughed and answered, “Run!” to which I smiled and thought, “Hope. Pray. Love.”
We
talked for a while longer and eventually got brave enough to go our separate
ways. I was immediately catapulted back into the chaos of life which included a
voice mail whipping from my eldest child who had no idea I was out helping a
friend. I arrived home and somehow between dialing Parker’s number and him
answering, I found my camera and looked up and was swept into the sky.
He was
off on some tangent about how he didn’t have time to enjoy nature like I was in
that moment and I said, “Open your back door and look up at the sky. Tell me
what you see.”
So he
did.
I was
taking photos and near delirium in my personal ecstacy and I think probably
being more than a little bit annoying to him.
After
all, I was calling him and what I was doing was delighting in my images, my
sky, the way it felt against my face.
One side of me scolds me, saying, “How can you be so selfish and
unfocused upon the person you were calling?” and the other side of me says “I
need to be present to what is in front of me and what is in front of me is this
incredibly gorgeous sky. I need to feel it and follow it and take the phone
call with me.”
Which
is what I did. And I apologized, too, for not being fully present to his words
as I snapped shot after shot.
I came
inside and wrote a poem, mostly because it felt like I had no other choice.
I
breathe, I connect with people, I see images, I feel words burst open through
me, I write them down, I share them. I trust the people who love me love me
enough to know this is not only what I do, it is who I am.
Now,
for you.
Open
your door and walk outside.
Look
up.
Tell
me what you see.
And
then, read what I saw and felt and saw and felt.
I wish you would
feel
how the sky feels against
the skin on my face when I look up
to admire it in its blue and
white crispness
The same wind that pushes
the frog shaped cloud into
a leaping, diving, catapulting
position swoops by me and
kisses me on the edge of my nose
turning me from an
almost-forty-eight-year-old-woman
into an almost-seven-year-old-girl
who can survey the cast-off once
Christmas tree and the sequoia
of palm trees and the fingers of
the now leaf-less mulberry and
remember my friend's fear-sadness
and tap into the hope that lingers
at the tip of the pine, reaching,
the naked limbs of the mulberry
completely content in their rest
the space in between the palm
branches where all I see
is blue, blue, blue
I hope you feel it
The way the sky feels
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