My usual approach, even on a day like today when I'm running far behind schedule, is to select a poem, write something about it, then try to find a suitable illustration, photo or otherwise.
Today, this evening, while skimming through my backlog of pictures, I ran across this photo of a wheelbarrow ... an old, old wheelbarrow loaded with wood, sitting beside a reconstructed log cabin ... so I began with it.
I took the photo because the composition appealed to me ... the horizontals of the cabin, the sweep of the wheelbarrow bed, the circle of the wheel, repeated by the ends of the sticks of wood.
I snapped it as a possibility for a future painting. I'm intrigued by old things, the challenge of preserving that look, but with a touch of freshness in the painting itself.
In this case, I also gave the photo a sepia tone, thus enhancing the feeling of oldness. I may or may not try to carry that over into an eventual painting.
The photo selection made, the choice of a poem remained.
Aha! I remembered this one, "Dare I Ask?" True enough, it's about a wheelbarrow, but a much younger one than that in the photo.
It's mainly that hand-lettered sign that lingers in my memory, those moments of lingering there, looking at that sign, imagining the red wheelbarrow and all its possibilities.
It's a poem about human frailty. We're stopped in our tracks by the prospect of owning something we need not, must not, have. And yet we're tempted, at least, to take a look.
In this case, did I sneak a peek? I'll never tell ...
DARE I ASK?
"Red Wheelbarrow for Sale," says
the small hand-lettered sign that
flutters like a special invitation to me
as I slow my pace, pause to look.
I'm intrigued. Not green, nor gray,
nor just a plain old wheelbarrow,
but red. I can see myself strolling
home pushing that beautiful red ...
What am I doing? I don't really
need one, haven't a place to put it,
my wife would probably kill me.
Still, maybe just a quick peek?
©
2002(originally published in Capper's)
***
Today's word:
peekAfterthoughts ... in response to your comments:
Thanks, Helen, for taking me on that little trip back to Southern Illinois with your comment ... I can just see that wheelbarrow in the back seat of that convertible ... or on the lawn at your place ... or, someday, in one of your paintings. As for proofreading ... even Professor Squigglee occasionally slips a cog in that dapartment ... but I agree with him when he explains: It's the thought that counts.
And thank you, Featheredpines, for that insight into "the eternal yard sale." I don't actually stop at yard sales ... well, hardly ever ... but I do slow down and take a look ... and it has sometimes appeared to me that some of the patrons might be in the business themselves of helping to keep the goods moving from yard sale to yard sale to ...
3 comments:
Your picturesque poem reminded me of a recent photography trip back home. Going through Jackson County, IL, in what once had been a living downtown district with lovely old brick buldings--now tumbling down--and now all but dead dead. Remaining is an ice-cream parlor with a porch where I took a couple pictures of fellows enjoying ice-cream cones whom we'd just seen up the road, eating at Giant City State Park. Next door was a store with junk for sale in the front yard, and there was a red wheelbarrow. I did take a peak, but I had flown in and was riding in a friend's Jaguar convertible. That wouldn't have been so bad to carry it in the back seat--a picture in itself, but they frown on taking things like that on a planes. They'd also frown on it in the yard of my condo in Miami--so I took only a picture which I may paint some day.
I still take sneak-peaks at things in yard sales, knowing full well that my condo doesn't have an inch more to put anything, and I've run out of friends who want my gifts from these sales.
Again...thanks for starting my day with a smile.
This reminds me of Maine's cottage industry - the eternal yard sale. They say you can buy an item Downeast and by the end of the season it will have traveled from yard sale to yard sale clear down to Portland. John McDonald jokes about this in a terrific book, A Moose and a Lobster Walk into a Bar :) And, it's all true!
Folks, please forgive my errors. I should be a better proof reader. One "dead" was what I meant to say...two was overkill...not pun intended.
Helen
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