Something there is in a soul’s composition that personalizes light from the connecting threads;
in the weave of mine, part my art and part divine, seems to be for the grandiose some kind of rare blindness in the mainstream sense, for I only find it in the minute and steeped in mindfulness,
the larger picture always blurred and muted, unacceptably-by-society dismissing sweeping views;
upon deaf eyes, the waterfalls, for my soul only hones in on single drops, the silhouette of an insect’s wings even beyond the forefront flowering.
Too far away are the large and obvious; I slip into the inconspicuous, secret portals and nooks that scan my soul and recognize me in my slow and scenic way home.
Don’t take me to the lookout point; take me to the mountain where I can climb to admire all the wonder along the trail. The view at the top can never be the peak: for me it can only be
in the little things.
You can hike with me if you have the patience, for a mile in nature won’t get you fit, but if you’d like to sit awhile beside me, I wouldn’t mind the company,
but no attention would I be able to give you when the sun sets on a solitary bee upon a pink bloom…
Destination to nowhere, traversing on foot, no longer running away, just enjoying the non-route and what blooms from roots wildly seeded and the textures of the season and infinite skies ever shape-shifting like my thoughts and the way I get lost far away in them. Dusk hushes. Frogs belt out. Alert for bears and human predators, I turn toward home and the portal of color gradually closes. My feet return to pavement, having being lowered back to reality which, these days, is equally rewarding. Outside in the mornings and in the evenings, essential to my emotional well-being. I can’t imagine not being gifted this amazing, tranquil creation. Thank you, Lord, for the free and natural cure-all medication. In my backyard, beneath the stars, I continue my wandering contemplations…
How can the same patch of land be so ever-changing?
How many more potential bad days can Mother Nature keep preventing?
How is it that I am the only onebearing witness to so much magicon a daily basis?
How much longer can the toad’s eyekeep me entranced? And the intricate details in the anatomy of insects?
How much time has passed in that outside world while I sit among the birdsand squirrels?
How is it that nonhuman friendshave become so underrated? And introverts given such a hard timefor avoiding socialization?
My colleagues are ordering their second round of drinks. I confirm with the waiter, “Just water for me.” Torturous are the hours I prove I’m not an island! (What’s a few white lies to protect my safe-haven?)
A dragonfly stops by to wink at me, shows off how he can fly away so freely into the breeze…
The conversation continues. I do not join in. Release me back into the wild where I fit in…
When it comes to my photography, editing to me is not perfecting, so I suppose I should call it altering; it is transforming creatively the tone, literarily, though that often comes from color changes, cooling or warming, fading or imbuing, really a canvas with my technology as the brush, though you would be surprised with the media I use, an old iPhone about to give out and whatever standard editing app it came with.
My lab is my mind’s eye in reverse, creating what my soul wishes to express, I but a medium myself. I play until the aha moment, always knowing that is exactly what I was looking for. Each starting photo, a message itself I collect from nature. Sometimes it speaks as is, especially when it is lit. Sometimes it lends itself, whispers, “Do with me what you may, May Child; my metamorphism is in your trusted hands. Make me the more you believe I am.”
Sometimes I feel the nature challenges me in this way to keep going beyond and beyond, rebirthing new ways, not godlike, but godchildlike, spending my days attune to the spirit in the petals and breezes, in the rays and the blades, in the insect and the web. I create with images I creatively capture, crouched down and over the barely noticed, shrinking further than Alice into the macroworld, still infused with wonder, perhaps even more so. With each alteration, a new message, perhaps divinely inspired.
I do my duties in the world so I can retreat––into the yard, into myself, into the absence of voices except my inner one and the whispers from butterflies and the birdsong, and I listen and listen for The One as I visit my many companions of the natural realm. Often, I bring heaven down. To earth. Though I find enough evidence that it is already here. All about us. And as much as I avoid the humans, I know the greatest purpose here is to love one another. My purpose the same but from afar. Bringing light and hope to you is how I try to do my part.
The things we edit…
Often, in relation, we edit by removing blemishes, by cropping out all the real, showcasing our best fake versions of ourselves and our lives, for behind the cameras lie the whole truths. We compete. We turn the cameras around onto the shells of our selves, lose the nature and others, snapshots of ourselves as the universe’s center, lenses in reverse yet outward, for our inner selves are not the focus.
There are pieces of heaven in each of us. Because we were each made the way He intended. What we make of ourselves from what we were given: that is the welcomed art of continued collaborative creation. Excavate the light within. Keep painting with your truest inner discovered colors. We should never settle for being done when we are each and all continued masterpieces in progress. May we never fade permanently to sepia or still life; though both of these are essential to the process.
I still believe we can beautifully alter all of this…
Ninety-three million miles away, yet upon the cobwebs of a flower, Sol’s ray reaches, haloes, frames.
How powerful that gentle, golden beam is when it finds and reminds us our insignificance
is more important and personal than we think it to be, for the Creator made sure the cold and darkness would always have returning light and heat.
We are turned away each evening, in a rotation beyond our control, perhaps to make possible the continuous rebirthing of new-day gratitude and hope,
to make possible these moments that universally lift up our gazes, to freeze-frame and coat in gold these nuggets of humble beauty appreciation,
like cobwebs on a flower that still me with revelation: in the tapestry and labyrinth of life, we are woven and connected by hidden common thread, and love could always, then and now, win.
Golden upon golden, liquid light layers, how much more obvious can it be that there is a heaven and already among us?
Upon the dark and blank canvas, with tender and loving brushes, He stroked us into existence and all that surrounds us,
has never left us, and reminders each day, He has rise from the earth and others’ divine parts, in likeness made, which we should reverently celebrate and feel blessed by every day.
My photographer daughter nearby (with better equipment than mine) inquires why I would take a photo of the flower from behind,
and I am a bit surprised, as she usually gets it intuitively, my fellow creative with our shared-way-of-seeing-nature genes…
I didn’t have an answer at the time, hard to explain the inner, abstract sensations, but as I play with the many images I took, some of it lends itself to alphabetic translation…
All stories in nature are wordless, yet powerful are the messages granted to the ones who listen, stay long enough for full transmission,
and as beautiful as each is, whether tales of love or sorrow, what good is one side or version or even chapter when the whole
can never truly be told in full with so many perspectives and levels of depth; to have the layers revealed comes with degrees of entrustment,
and this particular flower whispered permission to let me photograph the other sides after others would have moved on and left,
and it is with this honor that story then becomes something impossible to convey in either written or verbal language,
but oh how that message pierces the core of my soul in such profound truths we have yet to know…
No poem could do justice to such revelations, nor one photograph or two with so many facets of the single bloom so humble in His glorious creation.
I just connected with this beautiful soul through Instagram. I have made very few connections through IG, but they sure are among my most spiritually impactful. This song is just one of those that simply strokes like a harp my soul, brings up tears from wells too far deep within to stir the waters any other way than through music and song. (Wow to composer Tash Nidai!)
I have found myself replaying this song in the very early morning hours. I thought not only must I share it with you but see what dance my fingers would perform over the keyboard of my laptop here in the dark…
I find since experiencing true love for the first time in my life, and what I feel to be the purest and highest love possible between souls, such songs slip gracefully through, weave in and out of, my soul as love songs about both him and Him. Because they are so similar to me, when God blesses you with the one to love you as He does.
So I feel this song as I walk alone through a field of wildflowers in a flowing dress, running my fingers along the natural growth, arms open like wings, sun kissing me, grateful for His beautiful gifted creation that is such a part of me. I feel this song as I think of the one who loves me; no words can touch upon the feelings, but words set to the most beautiful music sung by a most beautiful voice, poetry set to music…it’s more than I can do to try to convey it as simply a poet. Lastly, I feel this song as a sad but still beautiful one, thinking about those who have lost the love of their life for now, how such love simply lives on and can carry us through until we connect again. Here are my photos and poem inspired by this song…
At the spring of our eternal love, white spring flowers bloom from the trees.
My weightless soul, though still embodied, flies with the birds above the sea.
Bare feet sink into the endless heavens of the warm, white, sugar sand as your natural sweetness transmits through my open hand,
Upon my soft cheek, a tear rests, tenderly clinging, not wanting to part from the kiss.
In a garden of white bell-blooms, only the breeze rings through me with supreme truths.
These are the ways I feel your love, my God and my soulmate; the love from you both fills and lifts me, beyond depth and height.
Laura Denise 