Yesterday we headed up the Bangs Mountain scenic drive for another photo session. It is off Highway 20 at the Canyon Creek Campground. Easter 2007 I did another post of this drive here. Yesterday it looked quite different as the summer has dried up water sources and much of the foliage. The rock formations through the Donaldson Draw are amazing with the different colors, textures, and shapes. When arrived at the top of the mountain the fields were very dry. I think you can find beauty in most anything in a field... even a dandelion gone to seed. The dogs loved running through the tall, dry grass. You have to look closely to see both dogs as they follow JEJ back to the car.
I have spent the last few days teaching myself more about my camera. We have also taken time to study how JEJ's camera is different than mine. As I sat in one place at our camp spot I took pictures of my surroundings in different ways. This is what happened.
The collection of pictures coincided well with a poem I discovered last night. There are times when surrounded by trees you do feel lost.
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
Where you are. You must let it find you.
another new favorite I discovered during my poetry reading marathon this week...
Everything
I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don't go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister
the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daises and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be
songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
I've had my share of necessary losses, Of dreams I know no longer can come true. I'm done now with the whys and the becauses. It's time to make things good, not just make do. It's time to stop complaining and pursue The pleasures of an ordinary life. I used to rail against my compromises. I yearned for the wild music, the swift race. But happiness arrived in new disguises: Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace. Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place. The pleasures of an ordinary life. I'll have no trumpets, triumphs, trails of glory. It seems the woman I've turned out to be Is not the heroine of some grand story. But I have learned to find the poetry In what my hands can touch, my eyes can see. The pleasures of an ordinary life. Young fantasies of magic and of mystery Are over. But they really can't compete With all we've built together: A long history. Connections that help render us complete. Ties that hold and heal us. And the sweet, Sweet pleasures of an ordinary life.
Judith Viorst
I have been reading lots of poetry lately. Today I read this collection by Judith Viorst. The poem I posted can be found in this book. I think it is reassuring to get to a time in your life when the pleasure does come from ordinary life. There are no trumpets, trails of glory, and I am not the star of a play or movie. I do relish the pleasure in my first tomato, green beans beginning their climb up the pole, blooms on a geranium plant, reading poetry books by candlelight, and picking a bouquet. All of it is sweet, sweet pleasure.
Ah....that joy of the first tomato of the season. We picked it and had the most delicious BLT sandwiches yesterday. Pablo Neruda uses words as art in honoring the tomato.
I have been reading many poets this summer. Raymond Pert had used selected poems of Pablo Neruda during the writing retreat and I have since read two of his books. Every word is carefully chosen to help the reader create an image or a sensory experience when observing a simple thing such as a tomato .This is what he said about poetry in the introduction
to his book The Essential Neruda :
“On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.”
Ode to Tomatoes
by Pablo Neruda
The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it’s time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.
as translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
I was so excited about this first tomato I must have been shaking and got a fuzzy picture!
Yesterday we headed up the Bangs Mountain scenic drive for another photo session. It is off Highway 20 at the Canyon Creek Campground. Easter 2007 I did another post of this drive here. 
Yesterday it looked quite different as the summer has dried up water sources and much of the foliage. The rock formations through the Donaldson Draw are amazing with the different colors, textures, and shapes. When arrived at the top of the mountain the fields were very dry. 
I think you can find beauty in most anything in a field... even a dandelion gone to seed.
The dogs loved running through the tall, dry grass. You have to look closely to see both dogs as they follow JEJ back to the car.
