Leaves and Loves

I've decided I don't want to speculate or ruminate on the relationship or affinities of these two photos. A whole lot of living has gone on in the 14 years between their creation. I just want to show them together.

Melina Wade Staal, taken November 15, 2017

Edna Milagros Staal-Robles, taken December 12, 2003

Beyond the Road's Edge

A little over 20 years ago I wrote a poem called "By Day, By Night" about humans believing they own the world, that anything they can see belongs to them. But, the world is more than our property, it is an entity that has not relinquished its claim to itself. It cannot be owned - that is only a fantasy that man entertains in his arrogance.

By Day, By Night

By day, the winding mountain road presents many vistas,

And all we see becomes our own.

By night, our headlights barely reach the shoulder.

And in darkness, the earth moves to take back its own.

Then, just a few years ago I ran across this poem by David Ignatow for the flip side. It seems he feels that suburbia is intimidating; I don't see the natural world as intimidating, more as powerful and benign. Still, reading these two poems feels to me like looking at the same scene from very different angles. Beyond that, I was struck by the commonality of the image of car headlights and the road. In Ignatow's poem, the light is constrained "timidly" to the center of the road; in mine the light is unable to penetrate the "primeval" darkness beyond the road's shoulder.

Suburbia

The silence of the suburb

its woods primeval dark.

Cars drive through,

their lights

timidly centered

straight down the road.

(David Ignatow)