Archive for May, 2010
I visited the churchyard in Stoke Poges occasionally to experience the peace, beauty and quiet of both the churchyard and St. Giles Church, part of which dates to the Saxon era. On one visit, this poem emerged, a reflection on the death of my father just a few years before.
The truth is, there’s just no way to see everything, which is why I find it so easy and rewarding to walk these same paths over and over. For it is never the same experience twice. The camera helps me to see and remember (and to share with others what I have seen), but mostly it has taught me to slow down, to focus, to pay attention to movement and color and light. More than anything, to light.
(for the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death, April 21, 1910)
This poem recently won first place in the Big River Writing Contest sponsored by Chesterfield Arts and Stages St. Louis. The contest celebrates Mark Twain & the Missouri River Valley region.
It is you, the spinner and weaver, we see
big and brash and full of [...]