Photos of My Week

Last week, I finished a book of poetry from Clint Smith called Above Ground.  It was an absolutely beautiful and powerful collection with poems about parenting in general and parenting as an African American in this world.   He ends with this poem that felt very unlike the rest but no less beautiful or powerful.  You’ll likely see why it spoke to me.

Look at That Pond - By Clint Smith

Look at the fish swimming under its silver surface. Look how the surface shimmers like sound. Look how the fish follow one another, how their bodies bend like strings of a harp. Look how this stone skips staccato across the surface then disappears with a whisper. Look how the ripples in the water never seem to stop. Look at the way the colors of the fish’s scales change as the sun slides across the sky. Look at the way the plants surround the pond as if they were trying to keep it safe. One day this pond will become a swamp and this swamp will become a marsh and this marsh will become a forest. Maybe one day my children’s children’s children will walk around in this forest and find the stone we skipped. A single fish can lay over one million eggs in a single year. Tiny plankton in bodies of water like this one produce over half of the oxygen on earth. My life is made possible by trillions of tiny mysteries. I exist because of so many things I’ll never see.  (Smith, Clint. Above Ground (p. 115). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.)

This beautiful poem  just connects with me to my weekly collection of photos of my week - some which are very nature-connected and a few (ok, one, that definitely is not)...  Here’s my week in photos...starting with four that were all on the same early morning walk.  The one with the heron was really amazing because it was perched way high up in a tree and I’ve never seen a heron up that high.  Also spoke to me of finding balance.

The next is one of some Columbine that my awesome wife planted and are just starting to bloom.  Just gorgeous (like my wife!)

Then the non-nature one and one that I technically should not have photographed.  But it was so awesome to see Return of the Jedi on the big screen once again and to do it with one of my children.  But how is it that it came out 40 years ago?!?!?!

And finally this last one that was yesterday after walking Scout in between downpours. Not sure what exactly but there was something that just connected with me about how this photograph came together.

The line in the poem that just spoke to me so much and still does today is this...

My life is made possible by trillions of tiny mysteries.