WILSON BENTLEY: JANUARY 15, 1885

 

 

Camera to the sun, glinting stars in my lashes

before melting, chilly tears, I would center

crystals in failed ceremonies till alone

I’ve learned to raise them in cold light,

having spelled summer with piano and fiddling

or magnifying dew on grasshoppers

and pendulous garden webs,

my eye always cocked to winter. Now,

to fingerprint each flake in the myriad.

 

Knowing nothing of photography, I was so far

from discovering images…which finally appeared

when I learned about light, though still blurred.

If only someone had been there to explain,

But away off on this farm I had no one.

Three years of bad practice

before I stumbled on small stops,

long exposures. This new clear intensity.

 

Today I think I have what I need:

ways to suspend warmth: opening and lapse,

the cool back room of the shed,

and the best tools: black wooden tray, slides,

mittens on a steady hand, broom splint, feather.

And holding my breath that would rather let go

any invisible time soon

I may own a pattern to hand over. 

 

 

© Diane Kendig

 

 

 

BOARDING A PLANE ON CHRISTMAS MORNING

 

The last thirty-six hours

bore down on me, but promised to lift

like the last weight slid from an iron door,

like the light just taking off through the sky

at eight a.m. these shortest days, the longest

I’ve known.  I was edgy with escape

and making it, loaded up with souvenirs

at the one open gift shop, little boxes

of stuffed lobsters stamped Trapped in Boston,

and, waiting at the starting gate

till you said, “Go,” I went but looked back

at you, standing in your forest green coat,

waving and not escaping.  And I thought,

this is how it will be.  One of us

leaving.

 

© Diane Kendig