Blueprints
Posted on | March 30, 2006 |
After a few days off I’m back to writing, fingering the blueprints that make me who I am. I’m going back to my childhood in the Colorado mountains, and to the stories of my parent’s love and faith. I’m looking for meaning in their loneliness and isolation; I’m looking for maps that can help me to describe the context of my own life.
Sometimes it feels impossible to make words describe the things my heart needs to say. Sometimes, barely, the right ones arrive on the page in the nick of time to save me from the heartache of knowing but not being able to explain.
Following the path of the dead
Opening and folding,
flush petals move towards sun,
where warm life stretches to the boundaries of stem
pulling nectar upwards against gravity.
In the moonlight
moths flock to the ghostly silhouettes
of backlit petals.
Their wings beat aimlessly,
falling for the sham of appearances.
Hovering at the edges
at twilight times, at dawn,
worlds open and close
like the finning gills of fish,
pummeling the air like the call of a coyote.
Here perceptions shift ;
the shape of the sea star gathered up
becomes an interior space.
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7 Responses to “Blueprints”
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March 30th, 2006 @ 2:46 am
I don’t see any possible way that you will not be published. Every time I read something of yours I feel that same surge of recognition… the same surge of belonging, as though the words have slipped into the spaces between my bones and made themselves ever so comfortable. You have a gift and I love coming here to share in it.
March 30th, 2006 @ 2:48 am
I love love love the second photograph!
and your desciptions of twilight: brilliantly evocative with the silence I imagine of finning gills, the shrill yodelling of the coyote. It makes my mind bend a little to read this, not to mention the +/- of the space around the sea star. Wonderful!
March 30th, 2006 @ 6:26 am
You are amazing, Christina. Your words and your photographs are so evocative.
March 30th, 2006 @ 3:51 pm
perfect!
March 30th, 2006 @ 8:06 pm
That is wonderful, the combination of photos and poem, the third stanza especially - there is something hovering in it that brings me back and back to it. Great!
March 31st, 2006 @ 12:50 am
Beautiful imagery in words and photos both! I love the idea of blueprints making a person who they are. Hope the words leap to your fingertips just when you need them.
March 31st, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
What is it about families - I have a similiar urge to their story. To figure out what made them who they were and are today. I love that you’re going back to your childhood and to who your parents were, and I know that the words will come. Just show up to the page and they will come. Sending you lots of dark chocolate thoughts.
And the poem - so beautiful. Love the twilight/dawn worlds opening and closing.