A morning photography stroll on a leg of local Blackwater Heritage State Trail, embracing the capricious Southern weather, hoping to find some silent stories and enchantment:














Poet. Writer. Photographer.
A morning photography stroll on a leg of local Blackwater Heritage State Trail, embracing the capricious Southern weather, hoping to find some silent stories and enchantment:














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 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

I always get there early
in the section to myself
and wait in the dark
for her to reveal herself.
Ahead of her core,
her aura swirls the void,
until the rebirthing beauty
is granted to my eyes.

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

I gently lay
my heart to rest
upon a sea-oat-
suspended hammock
and let my Maker
tenderly sway
through the breeze
my cradled malaise,
and after this dose
of soaking wounds in warm gold,
I’ll convert this sling
to sail boat…
Single glistening gossamer thread
catching and releasing rays with wind,
perhaps a bridge
between the yellow and white
wildflowers aglow with golden morning light.
I sit transfixed
by its intermittent existence…
Shadows have yet to be filled in
by Sun still half in bed,
and my ataractic trance
is interrupted by silhouettes:
two “mourning” doves,
omen of good fortune in love
or celestial messengers
like yesterday’s hummingbird
letting me know He’s been present all along,
and this is the amaranthine after-(last)storm calm.
Sometimes miracles happen
in one downpour
of the heavens,
and sometimes it may be
we need to learn
that last lesson…
Tucked within,
regardless,
I have come to believe,
are the nudges and nuggets
that to the origin
of our Created selves
lead and rebirthe
free.

I let a patch grow unmowed
to organically re-sprout
in my soul.
I leave it all out of focus,
for clarity comes
most gently
in the abstract
of moments…



Early morning dewdrops
twinkle as optical stars
in a galaxy dirt-hovering,
kissing blades and wildflowers.

Poem and images ©LDBS