Opening Act (Revisited)

I took a very similar photo of him last August, in this same window/stage. Part of my reason for (almost) retaking the shot is that I have since accidentally deleted a shitload of my best blipwork, including that image, and I wanted to get another shot of him framed, at this stage of his life, in such a perfect niche. He is already much taller and his hair is all there now, but still so fair that it appears invisible in certain lights, which allows one to admire the shape of his head. One difference from the last shot is that he is standing in this one (he was kneeling previously).

I wrote a poem about this window/tree, long before he was a gleam in either of his parents' eyes, while he was still swaddled in his loooong, preconceptional sleep, going back as far as you can dream, even before the Big Whatever. The poem was published in my first collection, AIRBORNE, in 2001.

Another Look

Taller than a three-storey house,
the steep shaggy old cypress

in front of my window outdarkens
an off-white, rain-battered day.

Fronds tangle and wave
like seaweed in the undersea heave

into deeper bluegreen; the stage
for nothing to happen is set

then something, a bird, flickers
and hops through the wind-ruffled ledges,

a blackbird glossy as split coal
lights for a few seconds, cocks

a pared cadmium-yellow beak
and the afternoon breaks.