images, albums, an impressionistic painting

 

images in time

so little depends on a yellow rhododendron leaf,

slowly spiraling into and then down a mountain stream,

quick with its own will,

each image I notice is but a snapshot,

filed away into albums easily lost in a corner somewhere,

each like pieces of sugar to be dissolved in hot tea,

time flows and they dissolve away,

I think of an impressionist painting,

each image, maybe precious to us,

but a dot of color in a whole we cannot yet see,

in my first hours and days in a wilding world,

I feel slow to dissolve past and future into the present,

beams of sunlight on the white water before me 

are patient, though,

the forest holds time like a lover,

anxious to savor each moment together.

by Henry H. Walker

July 3, ‘21