Every Friday afternoon,

there is an hour when I sit across the room from my daughter and watch as she puzzles out the details 

of Satie with her piano teacher. Her concentration shows in her straight spine and I am undone 

by the strand of hair spilling down her back.

Rain seems to carry us

through the flowering trees and into another time. 

 

After the party,

a few flowers and a tip of the hat to Morandi.

Seeing the girls at this distance

I can almost imagine them traveling the world on their own, and I feel a crack and
a shudder like the instant an iceberg breaks in two--a seam of cold water outlining 

the long white scar.

A careful attention:

The season of unexpected

      sunlight, and flowering trees, and memories as fierce and lovely as the changing skies. 

Everyday,

we like to make things---poems, photos, paintings, little alphabet drawings, 

and origami bookmarks in the shape of a heart.

This time of year,

 I want to press my face against the cold glass and feel the outside days approaching, those long days when everything happens under an open sky.

Awash, aware, afloat,

envelope, encompass, cradle.

An apple to eat,

 a bright horse to stand nearby.

This morning's fog

muffles sound and time, and we float out to the car.

At the Chinese garden

I drank my tea very hot and watched the people coming and going along the stone paths.

The sun was just beginning to burn the clouds away.

One possibility

is to arc back into the water, praying the sea will bear your weight.

Winter blues? Try this:

get out under the sky, ski towards the horizon with wet snow glazing your cheeks and the trees leaning close to the little flame of your warmth.

After a long day at work,

a persimmon in the fruit aisle, 

a soft cross between a flower and a robin's breast. 

I placed it in my palm and couldn't let it go.

But oh, the acerbic pucker-- 

the bitterness of that first bite.

Recalling

Diane Arbus's dictum that "a photograph is a secret about a secret."

Finding the world unexpectedly

electric.

Still thinking about portraits

and how brave it is to reveal one's self for even a moment.

Painters have always known

about the power and mystery of a subject emerging from darkness (think of Whistler's yearning portraits in the Frick), and it occurs to me that those same moments happen in our lives with one another---the casual words that allow a person to move forward into our line of sight, gradually revealing them as separate from the dark surround. I think I like taking photographs of people more than anything else for the heady combination of enigma and accessibility that occurs: this reminds me that we can never know another completely. And that is a great thing. Like living next door to a wilderness.

These winter roses

seemed like postcards from another climate as I walked through the east winds today.