Beauty sculpted
With the softest tools
The utmost patience
Beheld by a mind
For a fleeting moment
Recorded for a moment more
While the sculptor
Chips away
Her pieces ever
Works in progress
Not a one complete
Beauty sculpted
With the softest tools
The utmost patience
Beheld by a mind
For a fleeting moment
Recorded for a moment more
While the sculptor
Chips away
Her pieces ever
Works in progress
Not a one complete
I wonder if I’ve ever been
The subject of someone’s
Best photograph of the day
But never found out
Like this fellow here
On the third shot of eleven
Who never looked up
So never saw the camera
Pointed out the taxi window
Capturing this delightful moment
Colours and edges
Splashes and blur
Nothing to see
But for the eyes
A turn of a head
And just enough detail
This would be a discard
X’d out on a contact sheet
But for those eyes
Because now I want to know
What she sees
In a public square
Filled with food, and music, and play
I scan for moments
A click here
A click there
Another and another
Every picture tells so many stories
Though some obscured
And some unfocussed
While others extend
Beyond the bounds of framing
And when I burrow in
Ever more intimate moments
To be found
Until…
I am caught
I set down the words
But do not own their meaning
Any more than I control the wind
The sun
Or the rain
I release them
Into the world
Let the prevailing winds
Take them where they may
Perhaps to find the meaning
They have for you
It was the last full day in India. The smoke had been chokingly thick for the entire month I’d spent in the north, and Delhi hadn’t even been the worst of it. Still, I’d found a decent rate at a decent hotel (some small comfort in exchange for the respiratory distress) on the edge of Old Delhi’s fantastical Chandni Chowk markets for the final days before my flight home.
Would you return my
Gaze were it not for the lens
Friends for an instant
angry sea
angry sky
in between
the boughs all fly
tree trunks bow
wind tests their roots
and salts the air
with whitecaps flare
so here am I
lens held to chest
braced to keep
a steady frame
while all around
the chaos roars
a shutter click
renders it tame
I linger here
Instead the heated hearth of home
Frigid fingers upon my camera work
Until chill moment captured thus
By an eye that cannot shirk