Which comes first

realism or abstraction?
Apply to writing a poem and what do you have?
Apply to making lunch, what are you eating?
I'm sure you're aware, nasturtium are edible and quite peppery.

Nothing lonely here

Absence is full of potential.  And a repository of history.

Think of a blank page in a journal.  Imagine your hands reaching for a book and turning to the first page.  Imagine re-checking a favorite recipe; perhaps just to confirm the temperature.  Consider the empty pan before you make a favorite frittata.  Feel your hand reaching for the phone to call a friend.

Beside, you missed the drama -- a hummingbird sped by sip at the
salvia (off camera).  By 2PM there will be a tea-drinker in the garden.  

Set in motion

a platter of cherry tomatoes in a white bowl waiting for community.  Reminds me.... Reminds me of a moon waiting for us to adore.  Reminds me of an  innocent blank page of a journal awaiting the word-journey.  All set in motion by intention.  And association.  Aren't cherry tomatoes instances of petite lusciousness?

Summer Solstice

& the pinwheel
a digital one
simple
magical
a haiku
of light
& breath
fun, too

reminds you of ....?

& who will you be on this longest day of light?

Opening

Some images take on the look and feel of the opening line of a novel.

Others are the entire poem.  Whichever, the dream will be long.  The otherworldly meal, nourishing.

Transformation

Something so still as to be called a still life transforms shell into bone, dried pomegranate into a raspberry-center,  a slab of marble into forest and sea, and a glass perfumer into all the light necessary to siren.  Or perhaps this quartet coalesced as a bone/shell star.  Now consider, a poem as a still life accepting the quiet and/or awaiting transformation.   And what is cooking if it isn't transformational?

Mandala

I often wonder what my red eyeglasses see? Perhaps, they fashion what is in front of them into a mandala.

Or what does a lemon see of the knife which slices them.

Moving in a circular motion, what about a very short poem. Perhaps, a tad astringent:

nothing
as sharp
as lemon

A mandala to glass.  

Center

Amazing what spins from center.  Light luscious & vegetal.  And which words will be spoken over lunch on a bed of greens?  Which, [words] glorious in their silence?

Flames

Quite patriotic in its coloring.  But rising?  Or drowning?  It's up to poets and cooks:
turn up the heat; set the vision.  Or is this (simply) a sunrise's dream?

Trees & roses

Perhaps a tree really wants roses to be its fruits.
Perhaps roses truly want to be hats for trees.
And what does perhaps want?  By the way, is that "wish" or "lack?"
And, yes, the water is a mirage.  Most poems are like that, too.
Now consider the elusive artichoke. Yup, roses grow on trees;
if a poem were a vegetable, it would be an artichoke.

Reading is an image-bending activity

Homage to C.D. Wright.  Reading:  The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All.  In addition to being an image-bending activity, reading a book is never singular.  These notes in the first photo of who else to read because I'm reading C.D. Wright.

A book and a garden have this in common:  neither is ever singular.

Sometimes the image is the poem

Sometimes the poem is the meal.   And always the dream says, the moon is the star of it all.