I thought of you all winter

a mocking birdy. Image: Cynthia Via

I noticed you flew down to my grass, to examine,

and wonder about your next move.

The silly feet prancing in jubilation, circling yellow daffodils.

I tried to memorize you before your final spin:

orange blended to a dark gray, faded to a black head,

open, light gray wings and tips of blue past me.

Poem: A flight

 

Image: Cynthia Via

 

A flight that leaves us in distance,

even a mere thought it could be,

perhaps real is the distance,

but once realizing the length of time

apart, I know you’ll stay close,

as day thinks of night

and the heart brings you to mind.

 

 

Poem: Idle

 

 

Image: Cynthia Via

 

Idle

floating

                under the

vagrant moon

I don’t know,

             want to know

Poem: La Corneille

§

It springs up from a fence

And its friends are on the

Grass, pecking

This one flies down

I keep walking

It digs me with its call

To something known

The scene carries its meaning

In the black birds

Like the morning when

They lined up on the wire

Leaving at the first of morning

The emptiness of a muddy afternoon

it calls to fill

the day with premonitions

 

Poem: blue sky lake

My friend was inspired to write a poem after seeing this photo:

Image: Cynthia Via

She visited New Orleans this past month. We drove to Lake Pontchartrain, and sat there for a while contemplating about our fast-moving day. I forgot how much I needed to slow down. Biking has made me a hopper, moving through moments without settling down to think about them. Suffice to say I miss being a walker. Staring out at the water, I thought: there is love and sadness in that lake. It’s almost like it’s saying, you are no one to the sea. That’s how I feel when I’m floating over an endless body of water.

§

I see the vastness of the world,

Like the sea,

it’s unrestrained and always moving

while keeping still and quietly examining

everything and everyone.

I am just another vibe.

The girl without a face.

“A girl has no name.”

And yet I still exist!

 

By Kit Kats.

Episode: The power went out

Image: Cynthia Via

The power went out and it’s raining outside. I’m contemplating putting on my jacket and going outside with my bike to face the thunder. I miss roughing it out during an unexpected rainstorm. The last time I was caught, I biked in the rain through puddles and broken streets. It felt like I was mountain biking through the urban swamp.  I realize I’m not in the mood to battle the rain and the potholes, so instead I’ll write about my weekend. I swam in a turquoise pool under palm trees, met some older Nola residents, and ate Indian food after a year of not having any. I also edited some photos. Recently, I’ve been going to through the photos I’ve taken here since I moved last year. I’m sharing them through instagram @portraitofjune. Here’s a small poem about documenting the days with my camera.

A moment captured is

Distant and small

The faded house stands slightly off

it sprouts white flowers instead of moss,

changing the neglected memory

A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts

Image: Cynthia Via

 

The difficulty to think at the end of day,

When the shapeless shadow covers the sun

And nothing is left except light on your fur—

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,

Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk

And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,

Without that monument of cat,

The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,

In which everything is meant for you

And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;

And east rushes west and west rushes down,

No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,

The whole of the wideness of night is for you,

A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.

The red cat hides away in the fur-light

And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—

You sit with your head like a carving in space

And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

-by Wallace Stevens

Neo: I need the operator

Ring Ring!

The defining skyline: a dystopian city, a cover for the matrix where you don’t see anyone on the streets, and there are underground tunnels people talk about, but no one knows how to enter.

The buildings are foreboding, dark and spiky, going up to the sky, but with no sense of rhythm. There’s a feeling of doom. A singular odd bar peeks out; the only old bar among the shiny boxes.