The Great Blue

 Photographs have always left me with an odd sensation. I have never really been drawn to them as “keepsakes” of those I love. The sudden flash and capture of an image held in time has always left me with an unexplainable melancholy. Because I know this whole thing is temporary. I know this all unfolds in the blink of an eye. Regardless of my focus, or the angle of my lens, this picture of life before me is never a ‘still life.’ It is an ongoing and eternal and limitless dance of perpetual motion. Not to be captured or limited or frozen in concepts of time.

And Yet. With time on my hands, I have picked up my lens and tried to sharpen my focus on that which I can not hold onto and don’t want to lose. 

I am not well versed in cell phone photography. I can barely see through my lens what my own eyes behold. So I take aim at where the image seems to appear before me, and I pray to steady my heart and my hands.

I have recently discovered that The Great Blue Heron likes to visit a local state park in my area. The wingspan of The Great Blue thrills my heart. I have been seeking them out for quite some time now and when I found them I steadied my lens. I found the great bird perched on a log in the midst of a stream. The stream was not easily accessible and my photos were shot at a distance. The images looked fuzzy and far away, though they were so much closer than they appeared. I asked the great bird if she could spread her wings in flight for me. For just one shot of her soaring  wings of grace and majesty. I can have the patience of Job at times and I waited her out for a long, long time. As soon as I put my camera away, she took flight.  Without capture or limit. She was not bound by time or space or the gravity of others.

I recently reached for a favorite book that I hadn’t read in quite some time and a picture of my parents tumbled out.  And I tumbled out along with it. My grief forever raw and ever present. The photograph was taken in 1956. Before I had tumbled out at all. The images looked fuzzy and far away. Though I’m sure they are much closer than they appear.

I reached deep inside to align with my own sense of gravity, time and centering space. Only to ponder once more if such things can exist.

I then found myself fishing with my first born great grandchild for the first time ever in the history of time and space as I now know it. I photographed her smiling by the stream. The light spilling out of her eyes. She did not need fish. She was filled to the rim with the sun and the wind and the now.

The Great Blue Heron was fishing downstream from us. She had the patience of Job. She caught fish with one flash of her beak when the time was just right. And it was always her time, for it did not contain her. Her patience was different from mine. It did not have the feel of one who is waiting. It was an extension of her knowing. She was already one with the fish and the stream. They were already meeting inside her. 

She did not take flight above me. She did not tumble onto my lens. But her image is now inside me. Closer than it may appear.

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