Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Reflections at Pewitt's Nest 

Underneath the grave skies flashing occasional white space
My face fills up my own reflection

Mirror Mirror on the river
Who is the most alive of us all?

When someone dies, they take the present moment with them
A chunk of it lost forever, uncontinued
Without perception
One less person to help keep this clumsily constructed world
Rolling forward

My memories are buried alive
As are everyone else's - gravestones flagging
The fields of living just beyond our daily walls

They add to the past - a collection now so vast
That cemeteries have overcome cities

Death has certainly overcome me
From memory to memory creeping closer as I age
More in the cache, more fading away
Fewer years ahead, the present more potent
Poignant seconds


I line up my camera, frame the shot:
An acorn cap, a yellowed leaf, a rotted log
Everything in its place, liquid, lucid, beautiful
As I snap, the dead frog
I did not think I saw
Reveals itself to me
A moment of not memory
A moment of pure existence
Witnessing the split second dissolution
Of every other thought



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