I’m still trying I
A little past bedtime on a date I can’t remember. The shelter of our garage. The air buzzing and smelling of green, of wind and green and damp. A building-up, blowing-in storm over the mountains, over the valleys and pastures, up over the throughway with its traveling lamps that shine and shimmer all the way here, to this place where I’m standing a little afraid. The lightning, I understand, my skin understands: a wild thing. The sky electric, line after dazzling line of flying light, thunder deep and booming close behind.
The photos here a failure. I thought when I saw them: a failure. I’d meant to catch the lightning lines and caught instead echoes only: subtle variations in light.
New York, Summer 2023
. . .
I’m still trying II
Like fireworks, Jon says by text or by voice and so out I go into the night, footsteps and insect songs, the place where dirt road meets meadow, and there are the fireflies like fireworks. All that darkness, all that light. I take ten photos by moonlight, none turn out.
Somewhere in here is the moonlight. Somewhere in here are the fireflies as I knew them that night.
New York, 29 June 2023