Look up and look down.

The secret is, look up. The other secret is, look down. A wise cameraphone artist told me that in the spring. When the sun broke its watery way through this afternoon (unaccountably seeming almost ashamed to be making an appearance), I seized a looking moment, though there is all this work to be done, though I feel a bit crushed and mangled right now, though I look around and realize that there's no physical way to finish everything I need to finish, no way to be everything I would be at this moment. That kind of half-panicked looking around doesn't help so much, not with anything at all. And so, out I went to look up and to look down. And here is some of what I came back with (not all, though: who knows when the sun will pull through next, and who knows whether I'll be able to step out into its weakening late-fall shafts; I am not good at conserving, but I'm practicing with the pictures):




I do love the look of these bared trees. I do love the green things still trying to make their ways, despite the brown, despite the killing cold.

"What are you doing there?" says the speaker of Elizabeth Bishop's "The Weed" to the titular plant that has grown from her now-severed heart. It answers (in her own thoughts? she thinks), "I grow but to divide your heart again."

Look up. Look down. Look closely at the top of the picture of the tree, and you'll see a bird taking wing.