WHY WE NEED ETERNITY?

Missed opportunities. Too many of them….
Funerals we couldn’t attend.
Conversations never finished
or much more significant:
conversations we should have had.
Lots of questions,
especially, “What ever happened
to what’s her or his name?”
Forgiveness – lots of forgiveness
with an eventual end to every “I’m sorry for ….”
Grace: lots of grace

because too often I been so ungraceful.
A chance for a zillion tears and laughs.
Healings. Many healings….
Surprises – that bring laughter
and many a big, “O my God!”

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2010

Photo - not mine.
Would acknowledge

if I knew whose photo

it is.

FLOWING BY,

GOING BYE BYE

Some days I’m ice.
Some days I’m mist.
But most days
I’m like the river:
flowing by, going by, “Hi!”
I’m dark loose liquid,
flowing, making my way
down to the sea,
so tell me what you
want to tell me, now,
fast, before I’m gone?
“Hi! Bye! Bye!”

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2010

QUARTER

Spotted a silver quarter
on a January sidewalk –
“Wow! It’s usually a penny.”
It felt cold in both
my hand and my pocket.
Wondering: did the inventor
of the battery think about
how stones hold cold,
how stones hold heat,
like my laundry in a pile
on my bed three hours
after I take it out of the dryer
and it’s still so warm?
How does it do that?
So too a heated argument
or a cold comment
that lays there
on the sidewalk
of my soul for hours –
sometimes for winter weeks,
sometimes for the longest time.
Why?

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2010

WINTER WALKING, WINTER TEA

Wanting to walk faster, but one has to be careful walking in the snow …. Walking past hedges wearing expensive looking ermine wraps …. Walking under dark empty trees – with raised arms …. Walking down these cold white sidewalks…. You never know where there might be black ice beneath the snow, beneath one’s feet. Walking – talking to myself. I wasn’t hearing the sound of stepped on snow. I didn’t hear the snow complaining that my steps were ruining the canvas – the work of art being formed on the street just beneath my feet. Talking and walking with oneself is good. On today’s walk I was only hearing past words – memories – remembering talking to you about so many things in those wonderful conversations we’ve had on winter afternoons. Then there was tea – Irish tea – and so many slices of freshly baked rye bread from the Neighborhood Bakery – with cold butter – the knife making that acute cutting cold butter clinking sound on plate – and then with knife and fingers putting the butter on the bread – the bread you went and bought in the cold when I called and said, “I’ll be home this afternoon.” That was so long ago. Today walking in the falling snow – grey misty sky – evokes so many memories. You’re dead. You rise in the remembering – along with cold butter, rye bread, hot tea, and walking in the snow – and those long afternoon conversations. You’re dead now. It’s winter. I miss you and at times as time becomes years, I’m afraid I’m starting to hear the sound of snow instead of you as I walk down these winter streets. I miss you mom.

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2010

RELATIONSHIPS

Relationships, connections, reconnections,
small words, small touches, small looks,
“across a crowded room”
as the South Pacific,
“Some Enchanted Evening,” song goes,
but there also all those other evenings
when the other is no stranger,
all those scenes across the kitchen table,
the movie of our lives’ small scenes,
holding hands on the way into church
or at a movie or after a fight,
aware of, appreciative of,
small signs that we’re still thinking of the other,
needed, needed, needed,
to sustain and grow a life together.

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2010

PHOTOGRAPHY:  DIANE ARBUS

Quote of the Day: January 29,   2010

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”

Diane Arbus, [1923-1971], Quote 1972, Photograph by Diane Arbus, "Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967

PHOTOGRAPH

Quote of the Day: - January 28,  2010

“A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint of a death mask.”

Susan Sontag [1933-2004] New York Review of Books, June 23, 1977