with heavy heads

Is it over?

Summer is passing, all the signs are here, and yet, based on the heat, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Nevertheless, watching the horizon from a train window, the natural world sometimes seems full of messages.

1.

dropping
behind
thunderheads
the sun
seems
to
say
goodbye
to
summer

In an instant

After being in transit for over twenty hours, chasing the sun around the globe, I shut my eyes for what seems like a moment and open them to a different world.

2.

I close my eyes and
in that moment
the day turns to dusk

Upon Arrival

I’ve taken quite a few long trips in my life, measured in both distance traveled and in time away. Usually, I find it a relief to get home. Every now and then, though, I arrive and find myself feeling like a stranger in my own home. I look at the furnishings and belongings and think, who do these belong to?

3.

my home
after a long journey
not my home

Images Speak

From time to time an image appears before me that just seems so representative of something that I feel like I don’t need to do anything but capture the image before me and allow it to speak for itself. For me, this is another sign of summer’s passing.

4.

with heavy heads
the sunflowers face the sun
no more

In need

Occasionally, one comes across a single, mysterious shoe on the side of the road, and that shoe provokes so many questions. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Is the person it belongs to all right?

And sometimes one comes across socks which, just like the random roadside shoes, seem to hold their own hidden stories.

5.

socks on the roadside
in need of mother’s love

Tenderness

Every now and again, I find myself amazed at how soft and gentle things as hard and jagged as the mountains near my house can look, and the same goes for a few stern people I know, who, in aging, have lost some of their edge.

6.

twilight
even the mountains
have a soft side

Looking back

When diagnosing something, it’s so easy to look back in time and see all the signs and hints that you just lived with, overlooked, and/or missed. The question of hindsight then becomes, are the things we now assign as causes and symptoms really that?

7.

rear-view mirror
everything
a symptom

As always, thank you for reading.
All poems and images are original. If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, please feel free to share them.