By: Beth Kephart ,
on 11/12/2008
At night I keep
watch over my own
heart grinding, hands
winged out like a sylph
to muffle the sound. You
wouldn’t die either,
unaware. You would
stand by affirming blue,
you would remember
the plummeting pink
of the sun that was
caught in the blur
of yesterday’s train,
the shroud of your face, too,
in the scratched glass,
and in the rocking.
Hands over heart,
heart crossing.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 11/4/2008
I found her in a shop called Imagine in that place known as Skaneateles, and I brought her home because she gave me hope. I've hung her in my office window so that I might watch her float on air.
Do you remember that thirty-four minute French film called "The Red Balloon?" Do you remember how the balloon was the boy's best friend and did not have to speak to take him places? The balloon would show up and the boy would look up and that was the adventure.
We hunt for stories as writers—for complexity, entanglements, surprises. But sometimes it is the simplest story that surprises us the most, that we remember, all these years later.
We catch our breath.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 11/2/2008
In Skaneateles you can walk straight out to the end of the pier and stand above the world's cleanest body of water—stand there and look out and look through the pristine and the unsullied, the hints of emerald within the blue.
Yesterday there was still the bloom of lemon and cranberry leaves along the shore and a sedate crowd of white gulls on a single sun-warmed roof. There was the coming crisp of winter, the gaping grins of autumn's pumpkins. One season invested in the next.
There are days too beautiful to record. There is glint that can't be captured. Beauty like this leaves me gasping for words, struggling to stitch a single line of meaning.
It's beautiful but...
you have insomnia? I'll send my kids right over.
Ha. Very funny. I take my insomnia on the rocks, thank you very much.
Lovely poem & photo, Beth. Have you tried deeping breathing and/or yoga? I've been amazed by the effects . . .
Jane, thank you. I don't do yoga but I have learned to breathe more deeply and it is that that has begun to keep the panic attacks at bay. Now when I don't sleep, I simply don't sleep. I get up and write instead.....