December 21, 2017. As this year moves closer to closure, usual seasonal mood swings squeeze into limited interior space crowded with national tensions, frustrations way beyond individual control and impossible to expel. Thank you, Nature. Your cycles remind “this, too, will pass”. Optimistic fingers tightly crossed, I look toward 2018.
December 5, 2017. I spent yesterday foraging through 15 years of digital photos, seeking the right image for this poem. Finding the poem was a simple search on title. The search was triggered by reading Robert Okaji’s poem “Shakuhachi Blues” (on his blog: https://robertokaji.com). It took me back to the mountain above Cloudcroft NM, sitting around an evening campfire, watching a young man whittle while listening to my man play a wooden flute – feeling the flute vibes reshape me.
That evening was in 2008, before I began pairing poems and photos. In time the right photo surfaced – an image from elsewhere in New Mexico, at sunset, man and flute in beautiful trance.
stepsandpauses 