my life in photographs

I often dream of having a giant field where I am free to garden and play my banjo. Here, there is a home where the snow never shows uninvited and the kitchen stove is always brewing something for the bellies of anyone who lives or visits. I grow snapdragons in every color, they live like they're beanstalks and ladders, beginning as baby seeds in earth and stretching well above my head, even on my tallest day. The garden grows wide with so many flowers, if one is pulled by wind or weather, I don't feel like I am losing much. When all has been tended to and the dusk draws near, I find my chair that looks out into the country and I let my banjo ring. This is my often dream, and often dream of it, I do.
 

I'd rather be growing snapdragons in the yard and watching the bees.

This is how to leave your head or the winter or the nagging that comes on Mondays. Decorating my house with flowers and knowing there is a certain kind of satisfaction in doing these things I want to do, instead of just thinking of them and spending my days begrudging the energy required to do so. Tiny victories, that is all I am after today.

I do not know how I survived a bad day or a bruised self before I played guitar. It is in these strings where I begin again and again and again. This is our gretsch resonator, the guitar which plays best wearing a slide and used as a tool for letting your worries slide along with it. I could have found other ways to spend my time, but playing this silver stringed machine in open D makes me feel like it's a good thing life came to be the way it did.
 

I have been counting down the hours, the minutes, the seconds until the first sign of spring arrives. Seems to be the only poems or stories I write in the winter appear like I have no mind and only half get written, none are finished, but when the birds begin to sing again, when the day drops light onto the skin, when the berries break through the bough and the dirt of a broken garden begins to show, I know I am seeing through my own eyes again, instead of the rust colored specs of what was a gloomy winter. 
 

We had two kittens visiting us, one with grey lines like a wild cat and one wearing what looked like a black mask. Their fur was soft like only a newborn knows softness and their heartbeats sounded like a tiny orchestra. I watched them skirt across the carpet and climb onto high couches as their tails curved and swayed. They clawed at my hair as I knelt to get closer. They made what was routinely known as a dog person laugh and grow with joy and surrender to their sweetness. Imagine a ladder and escaping out of a grey day just by holding a kitten in your arms. 

Do not let these photographs mislead you - we are still waiting for the clouds to part so we can remember what it was like to have the sun on our side. We do what we can by living in a house plenty with dried flowers and cuttings from last year's garden. I title these 'my life in photographs' and I'm not entirely sure why, considering, they only reveal parts of my life, not the whole, but I cannot imagine anybody preferring to see me in my pajamas to a bouquet of bright flowers!

How has your life been lately? Tell me, what is on your mind?

Follow