What is there to do with a runaway poem that's out of control and refuses to be edited? How do you cover the mistakes in lines that do not scan properly, or how do you define or defend phrases you have no idea as to their meaning?
If chefs can cover their mistakes, their culinary oversights with mayonnaise, then a poet geek can cover her shortcomings with photos and music. It's debatable if I write poetry any better than I cook. (Shrug.) Please allow a bit of time for the video to load .... oh ... and pass the mayonnaise.
text & photos by Pardes
THE GARDEN OF HOPE
The expansive Christiana Hospital campus is between my home and a major shopping area I frequent on my bike rides. Today I discovered the "Garden of Hope" that has been newly added outside a new Cancer Treatment Center. There is a gazebo next to a pond with fountains and a Canada goose conclave.
I stopped for my lunch picnic in the gazebo.
It's very peaceful and quiet. The fountains in the pond drown out all traffic noise and random thoughts cluttering your brain. I noticed a memorial in the distance.
I went to investigate and found a memorial plaque that made me catch my breath as tears stung my eyes.
I sat there for a long time taking it all in....the intense poignancy of it, the scores of women who lost their babies, the women yet to come who would add a name to a bronze leaf. The surroundings of the memorial tree plaque had a distinct feminine feel to it. The keens and ululating of centuries of women who lost their babies hung in the air from the collective consciousness. The leaves of the bronze tree appeared to be rustling in the breeze and dancing in the sunlight. I had to stand very close to see that they really were not moving, they were reflecting the sun.
Surprisingly it was not an oppressively sad place for only a few feet away was the Garden of Hope and the Walk of Hope pathway. It's what women do....pick up and go on, often with the camaraderie of other women.But sometimes, we must go it alone and when no one is looking, and after the acceptable time limit that others will give us, sometimes we need to go alone to a private place and place a wreath for the anguish in our hearts.
And then we come back from that private journey with the instinctive urge to be with other women who know where we have been and may go again. There is such joy and beauty in that.
I want to honor all women who has loved and lost, and women everywhere yet to take that path. I worked a photo through Photoshop of fountain sculpture I found in a park. Women of all sighs and sizes who draw strength, humor, and knowledge from other women on the same journey.
Yes, I'm sure of it. Those bronze leaves that seemed to move weren't just reflecting the sun. No, the babies of our heart are definitely dancing.
Riverfront Market
This area of Wilmington, Delaware used to be an eyesore of abandoned buildings serving as crack houses. A billion dollars later it's now a tourist attraction and a magnet for the lunchtime business crowd from the banking community.
I'm surprised how reticent people are when someone passes by with a camera. It's not vanity as much as a worry that their privacy is being invaded. However, I pose no threat since I appear to be someone's dusty-rose aging Aunt and certainly not a reporter or an artsy-fartsy student trying to capture the gritty or flagrant or "real" side of life.
In the late 70's when I first got a long telephoto lens, I found that you could capture people in their private moments of reverie without their knowledge. The power of it was intoxicating until I happened to focus the lens on a young Amish girl in Lancaster caught unaware and sweeping the concrete free of leaves that lead to the barn .
She paused for a moment to brush away a wisp of her auburn hair that had escaped from her bonnet and you could see her expression shift away from "idle hands are the devil's workshop" to some thought that made her cobalt blue eyes sparkle. The wind was swirling the leaves up around her and it would have been an award-winning shot.
But I did not click the shutter. It was a rude invasion of privacy and it would have been a "sin" to steal her private moment for my own.
After that I never took another shot without permission from the "model" or without sharing the photo for their approval.
I found this captivating young man in his stillness amid the adrenalin-charged business executives who hurried by and demanded "no mayonnaise" on their club sandwiches and "Evian water please, not Deer Park water."
After taking the photo of the young man, I walked up to him and showed him the view screen. "I took your portrait. Hope you don't mind. You are very handsome and I love the peaceful stillness you bring to the market." He nodded in quiet approval.
"Wow, get a load of that Tomato!"
After I had a conversation with the vegetables at the produce stand, I gathered my club sandwich to go ("EXTRA mayonnaise please") and headed to the door to leave but heard a voice behind me. It was the same young man now behind the counter of his small news stand unlocking the cash register to begin business again. "Miss," he said to me. "You are a lovely day."
Perhaps he really meant to say, "You have a lovely day." But something tells me he meant exactly what he said.
Posts
