A moment with a stranger

Sometimes you have to share a moment with a stranger.

The wind chilled my hands as I walked. Needed to stretch my legs after a long commute. I had watched the sky from the green space west of Oak Leaf Trail. Had not planned to compose a photo of the scene. Only enjoy it.

But the desire to compose a photograph won over and I moved closer to the walking bridge over Lincoln Memorial Drive. I stood for awhile watching the beauty of the morning unfold. There will never be another morning like this. Not in thousand years. Once a morning is spent, it can never be duplicated. I have read how the great masters of haiku captured moments in a few lines. Saved them for centuries. Could I do the same? With a photograph?

I do not know how long I stood there. But after I composed a few shots, I placed my camera back in my bag. I noticed an older man to the north. He stood near the walking bridge. I had seen him while walking, but did not notice him while photographing the scene.

We stood there for a moment together watching the sun rise, the clouds, the lake, the lights, the darks. Amid the roar of construction behind us and the wind, it was a quiet moment. My hands grew cold. I saw the stranger pull a mobile device from his pocket. He held it to the sky. Tried to capture the same thing I did. We tried to haiku a morning in a thousand pixels.

He still stood there when I departed and walked north on Prospect Drive.

Searching for lost confessions


There is so much to confess. A thousand things must be confessed.

Thirteen moons since last I confessed.

What is confession? The admission of guilt? A written or oral disclosure of activity committed that requires reconciliation, restitution, and restoration?

Confessional poetry of the 1950s and 1960s (think of poets like John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell) forever changed the course of American poetry. It was less of a religious expression and more of a psychological therapy for the poet(s).

When I first started posting confessions it was somewhere closer to a Japanese renga meets an American confessional poem meets to-do-list.

But those confessions, those poems, those lists, fell into my beard and the rain washed them down Jefferson Street to the Third Ward. I have tried to locate them…
in coffeeshops…
and park lots…
