STRIKE A POSE

Sometimes I wonder, what does he look at all day? When I come home Slugger is usually right there in the window waiting for me. Today was the New York Yankees home opener. It was a rainout, but when I came home Slugger (so named because of my love for baseball) greeted me. As a kitten he could sit on the window sill without spilling over onto the couch. Might be time to make him run the bases. Hummm, what is it they say about pets resembling their owners? Okay, guess I have to start thinking about getting back to the gym. As for Slugger... that Science Diet light just isn't working.

GONE

Reminder to self... time is short, life is fragile, pay attention. I am not sure where the week went, but when I bought these daffodils they hadn't even opened. When I got home today and looked at them they looked withered and fragile. I missed the part where their trumpets are open, full of life and announcing their beauty. I guess I got so caught up in the day to day demands that I didn't take time to LOOK and SEE. Not very observant for a photographer. In the next week or so, I will plant the bulbs in the yard. Fortunately, next year when they bloom I will have another chance to see them in full bloom and appreciate their beauty. It's not that way with all things, most that go are gone.

LEAVE THE LIGHT ON

I never paid much attention to this lamp in my living room, it was inherited and has survived a move or two without winding up on the curb. It is functional, unobtrusive and serves as a good reading lamp. Today as light faded outside and I was thinking about what to post, it clicked on thanks to the timer. I saw the graceful curve in its neck and the nice straight lines in the glass shade. I saw that not only was it functional but it had nice form too. This is the light that is always on when I come in late at night from work. A beacon it greets me and its glow warms not only the room, but me. Yep, I'm leaving the light on.

PUSSYFOOT

Sometimes in the wee hours I can hear my six year old tabby Slugger come pussyfooting into the bedroom. Many nights he is so quiet I don't hear him, I just feel the earthquake of his fifteen pounds jumping onto the foot of my bed. In the morning after he is fed he races around the house, charging up and down the stairs like a herd of elephants. I tell myself he is getting his exercise. Yet I wonder how those tiny graceful paws that are so quiet at night can make so much noise in the morning.

SYCAMORE STUDY

I felt the influence of my Mom today as I searched for a photo to post to my blog. She would often point out different trees to me when I was young, the pin oak in the front yard which she has always detested, the pine tree in the backyard that my Uncle planted as a small little sapling more than fifty years ago. She never gave it a chance and now it is so tall it towers over the telephone pole and lines. There was a beautiful dogwood outside the window of my childhood bedroom, that became diseased and had to be taken down. I recall that Mom would often recite Joyce Kilmer's famous poem "Trees" to me as a child and later on the poem became part of a class project for her grade school students. After she retired from teaching she gave tours at a botanical garden and the highlight of the tour was the very rare Franklinia tree. Today I drove down Sycamore Lane in my neighborhood and as I looked up I spotted seed pods dangling from the limbs of what else, a sycamore tree. Almost monochromatic it looked a bit like an etch-a-sketch drawing. I recalled the closing verse of Kilmer's poem (guess Mom helped me commit that to memory) "Poems are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree". I noticed how clearly the limbs separated from the sky and the clean lines in this photo. Kilmer's poem took on a new meaning.

ANOTHER SEASON

The off season for baseball is over. My off season is over too. Curiously, baseball ended when the Fall Classic did in October, almost precisely at the same time I stopped posting. As I see it we both experienced an off season. The 2008 Major League Baseball season officially began today in Japan where the Red Sox played the Oakland A's. But on a corner lot in the Bronx just a block or two away from Yankee Stadium three young men played baseball as a mural of Yankee legends looked on. The season ends, but the passion endures. That's how I feel about photography. I stopped posting for awhile, but I never stopped seeing. Baseball is back and my blog is too. I find a certain symmetry in that.