Two Lone Hearts in a Park

I’ve photographed last sunsets and first sunrises of new-year transitions before and was not feeling it this time, but as the sun was revealed on our first-again rotation to greet it, I did decide to quickly depart to go pay tribute at my favorite local spot, especially since my own thoughts and feelings about New Year’s everything were disruptively in disaccord. So off I went, almost-regretfully-now past sunrise from indecisiveness but also confident when I feel the tug, the where and when always has its own divine purpose. At least it was early enough to have most of the “world” to myself.

My decision came with the peace, cleansing, and renewal I knew it would as I got to leisurely take in and photograph the grand and minute, having the downtown riverwalk all to myself. If you’ve read or viewed my previous work, you know how obsessed I’ve always been since moving to this historic little city with my bridge (and trains) here, my soul somehow connected to it in a home-like way, at least as a familiar stop in the sure direction of home. It’s fitting I start here again; it’s where I left off with this post almost a year ago when I took way too long of a break from writing and photographing, from myself:

That last year, and the one before, and perhaps all of the ones back to my childhood… let’s just say, this is the first one I can remember that I am beginning healthy, healed, and free. So maybe I will embrace this next revolution. Perhaps this is the one in which I find home. It already started with a Day One smile when that “where and when” of that tug revealed itself so personally to me:

All images©️LauraDenise

Into The Mist

Into the morning mist,
that invited only me,
I intentionally solo-slip
into my private
homecoming,

into the enchantment
of symphonic drops
that dance among the treetops
but never fall,

with birdsong on hold
for owl’s solo
in an otherwise silent
world all my own.


Dew-orb-adorned
gossamer garland
drapes the skeletons
of my beloved wildflowers,

but hues and perfumes
are ever-present
in the South,
so fresh macro-romance
I set to seek out

while preserving
the wordless stories
transitioning from
the confinement
of earthly seasons
to ethereal love.

Poem and images ©️LauraDenise

Chain Links

Withering weed
behind chain-link fence
produces the illusion
of being defenseless,

unable to escape
to freedom,
but the thing
about dandelions
is the way God made them,

for big are the dreams
they are charged with,
but it is in their breaking apart
into pieces that launches

these seeds of more
to be rebirthed elsewhere,
carried protectively upon benevolent breeze
and prayer

in different directions
better for us,
for when dead ends surround,
the ways are through
or up,

toward The Light,
and wing-bathed in hope,
blind-ride flight right through
the wide-open holes,

or one cracked window…

Poem and images ©LauraDenise

Well Mirage

By clinging together,
raindrops resist
at the edge 
of the cliff, 
the abyss,

at the border between
life 
and the cracking brown
that begs for tears
to re-quench
what has already been
drowned:

concrete, manmade.
How futile it is to keep
watering the pain.

Green and blue
reflect and infuse,
ever so gently pull
toward better use:

decide instead
to feed growth
and desert these looping
barren roads.

Poem and image ©LauraDenise

Torches

Raindrops at rest,
blown glass upon glass,
aglow from a torch on the lawn
and in my chest,

I willfully enter
the abstract enchantment,
slow dance
with the gentle benevolence,
in and out of the past and present,
flickers as glimpses
of truths, dreams,
and premonitions,
possible directions,

barefoot in the wet,
around the fire,
awake in the trance
of extinguishment and desire.

Poem and image ©LauraDenise