Best Photograph Poems
I’ve always been restless since I was a kid,
to settle near drives me insane.
I’ll just throw together the best that I can
what I own and be gone again.
Boxes long packed I had stacked in a shed,
are obsolete, so I feel that I have
to lighten my load for my road ahead,
then discover an old photograph.
Stopped in my tracks, I sit on the bench;
I look deeply into the face.
My eyes go all misty as I travel back,
to a little old weatherboard place.
Where I remember the warmth in the kitchen,
on those cold and wet winter nights.
Hot steaming soup; the open wood fire,
and the flickering kerosene lights.
How the family was close knit together.
We hadn’t even heard of T.V.
Chatting while eating our Sunday roast;
neighbour visits for hot scones and tea.
Bare footed we ran through the paddocks,
seeking out mud or a puddle.
If we came down with an ailment,
the remedy - a kiss and a cuddle.
Patched up were my breeches and socks.
Most ‘jumpers’ were ‘hand me down’.
I was so proud of my ‘new’ clothes;
showing everyone who came around.
Rabbit was our staple diet.
Trapped in the bush at the back of our home.
‘Chooks’ we kept for the eggs;
only eaten if we killed one of our own.
Blinking, I came back to earth;
took a breath and so pleased to find,
what I believed was forgotten,
is deeply entrenched in my mind.
Dormant I wait for the moment.
Something releases memories I have.
A tear falls and darkens a spot,
on Mother’s faded photograph.
Deep in the Florida steamy everglades,
A single blue heron strides in cobalt blue water;
Regal and grand with grey and azure plume feathers,
The call- a harsh croak that penetrates the calm.
On the water's edge amongst wild grasses and ferns,
Perhaps a bulky stick nest is hidden with pale blue eggs;
The landscape is graceful, quiet and oh so beautiful,
Rich with hues of green foliage blowing in the breeze.
The atmosphere is soggy, humid and hot,
And in the deep stillness the blue heron stands majestic;
An image held in time- the beauty captured,
In a photograph that I will treasure ever.
________________________________________
February 14, 2015
Poetry/Verse/A Photograph Captured
Copyright Protected, ID 02-640-879-14
All Rights Reserved, 2015, Constance La France
Submitted to the Standard contest, New or Old 3
sponsor, Eve Roper, Judged 04/2015
Second Place
He loves me
He loves me not …
He loves me
He loves me not …
When the rose tinted petals fell from my eyes
I was no longer blinded -
finally I could see his deception
Photograph #No 1 Under 10 lines Contest. Sponsored by Poet Destroyer A.
04~16~16
You become Raffles and its Long Bar.
Better, I'd imagine, than it needs,
or probably deserves.
Happy, fair,
tanned loveliness with a dash of sauce
and a hint, I think, of innocence.
Had I noticed that before?
Melbourne today is cold and squally.
Now where I look is stained with sallow sunshine
then buffeted by gloom thicked winds
then still.
Then lashed by rain then still again.
And all about are sodden drifts of autumn.
I wish you were here.
A piece of the past
A moment frozen in time
Another blessing has perished
Another mountain to climb
How lucky are we
We can touch with our skin
A love that is lost
That has come to an end
A ticket to our former selves
A free tour through history
Answer to our question
A vision for our ministry
Nothing more superior
Not a jewel that could surpass
Proof of times gone by
Another moment couldn't last
Rhein II - The Photograph
-----------------------------
Set between two slabs of green
the slender Rhein is seen.
If she goes from left to right
is no one's surest known.
The sky is overcast above
and no birds there are seen.
I am an admirer, sure,
of green and then the green.
12/29/2018
I remember you in all your faces
from the photograph of a young girl
surprised at being looked at, and later,
Sun brown and strong over the garden hoe
or throwing your head up to one side
around the nanny's rump to milk her.
I remember your white face in the doorway
when you came, night-dressed and uncombed
to tell us to settle down and go to sleep,
The smiling face as you put the lemon pie
to cool just inside the back screen door.
My favorite! I said. You said you know!
Best of all was the face that stayed
indoors while we stripped the hollyhocks
of reds and pinks for dancing ladies.
In the quiet afternoon, our small voices written
on the warm green breeze.
Then came your grandmother and great-
grandmother faces, made up of babies
and children and of the old women
Who used to be your daughters.
Now one more pose
one more shutter click.
Move slightly to one side, just out of
camera range. See the set?
The scene plays on; the mouths are
Still moving. You can look at it
from this point of view:
all glass and the sound of a bell.
Take up the shimmer and enter the sound;
everything is possible. You and I
will be girls together, hold hands and
Swing one another in wild circles.
It's all right; you know all the others
and the rest of us will be there soon.
It's been a lifetime since I heard your voice
Most times I can't recall
Your Laughter and whispers became foreign to me
Behind my memories walls
Too numerous nights when your face haunts my sleep
That I struggle to hold to the last
Fighting to save what my minds eye has seen
A myriad of years in the past
Was it so long ago that you passed from our lives?
Laid down for your final sleep
It feels so close although far from my grasp
You have been the one treasure I keep
I've searched out your life and the people you've touched
The legacy you built over time
Trying to resurrect you in some practical ways
Weaving their memories with mine
For twenty five years I've stared at your picture
Recounting each day remaking each choice
If I search deep enough in those eyes long extinguished
It nearly whispers a trace of your voice
I saw a battled frame
housing a black
and white photo
of a hero
in war,
proudly posing
hiding his fear,
his fragility
some family's pride
and country's
creased,
in a junk shop
What to photograph first?
My yard is a haven for every color of flower.
There are mushrooms, and worn out stumps, and renegade violets.
There is Queen Anne’s lace, and prairie golden rod, and honeysuckle.
There are tiny red berries, and there is moss of the greenest green.
The sky is filled with lavender, and smoky gray, and the softest blues.
There are cardinals, and robins, and butterflies, and bumble bees, and wasps.
There are knotholes, and gnarled branches, a tree that crackles with crows congregating to go south.
There are wood nymphs, and elves, and faeries, and rainbow orbs, not seen by the naked eye.
I will start with the orbs.
I saw a photograph of a hand
in a museum
thin and emaciated
It does not matter whose hand was this
a blackman, a white, or a colored
A male or a female......
It was an active hand of a factory worker
might be a hand of undernurished African refugee
or a hand of an AIDS victim....
It was a fisted raised hand
with a slogan in a procession
for human rights.....
It was the cut hand of doctor Che Guevara
sacrificed for the latin American people......
A moment in time
once treasured forever, now
just zeroes and ones.
On Seeing a Photograph of Mt. Everest
By Elton Camp
Some things are better from a distance admired
I needn’t be “close and personal” to be inspired
I have no need to make any personal inspection
So as to develop an appropriate degree of affection
Mountain climbing would surely be last on my list
Of adventures and experiences not to be missed
Perhaps going up might not actually be too bad
But it’s the possible rapid descent that’d be sad
And whether the weather should snowy or fair,
Way up there, not very much oxygen in the air
At any rate, I don’t plan ever to put it to the test
And somebody else is welcome to climb Everest
TEARS OF AN IRISH GIRL
( Impression From Grandmother 3x Esther Louise Arbuthnot's Photograph 1876)
While the rain is falling gently on the roof it makes the sound
of a time that's long forgotten though it seems to hang around
I can hear you breathing lightly from an Irish dream I've known
it has come to Pennsylvania where you've found me here alone
and I can feel you when you cry.
So far from home, you wonder why,
and it makes me want to die.
All the way from County Down there was a dream you had to find
you were long ago and far away, but always on my mind,
in your photograph your eyes are reaching out perhaps for me,
I can feel you when I see you but I never really see,
what makes you think you have to cry?
You must have known I'd wonder why,
it still makes me want to die.
Can you hear the raindrops falling? County Down's so far away,
or perhaps it's just forgotten, like a dreary Irish day,
I can feel it when you're smiling, and I see it in your eyes
love is gone before you know it, and it's then I realize,
it's made you think you have to cry.
And through it all, not wonder why,
it still makes me want to die.
© ron wilson aka Vee Bdosa the Doylestown Poet
On seeing a photograph
“Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence”
- Rainer Maria Rilke -
A rare prologue gone awry
Drafted as it was in the midst of
A terrible denouement
Plain and bare for once, shorn of frills
Exposed to all the evil
And in a fluster
Here it was left incarcerated
Within the burden of unkind words
Craving care
Words that just couldn’t tell
That wouldn’t at all hear
Nor be fair
Moments before getting erased
By the most blasted hand that ever
Pulled a trigger
Into Silence.
And here I stand listening to the news
That’s always arriving out of Silence..
S.Jagathsimhan Nair
8 May 13
• On seeing the photograph of Balachandran, son of Tiger Prabhakaran, moments before the 12 year old was killed.
For Kim Morrison's