Life's lens~

In this fourth New England snowstorm--a beautiful one with snow falling gently and clinging to trees--I took my camera and braved the poorly plowed roads to capture the beauty in pixels.

Feeling expansive, thinking of the nation poised to inaugurate a new president, I chose my wide-angle lens to shoot landscapes. I'm aware that my mood, my mindset, controls my photography. I was not in the mood today for close focus, certainly not the minute detail a macro lens allows, and I had already zoomed in on birds waiting in the tree by the driveway for their turn at the feeder.

I wanted to think about the country while I focused on the beauty of the countryside.

I don't know what the future holds. I listen to the president elect's words on the radio in my truck and think how he has not provided specifics, but he's fed hope to a hungry nation . . . a nourishing meal, as long as it lives up to its promise.

I'm anxious for a breath of fresh air that a new administration brings, yet aware that hope is just that. Hope. I will remain optimistic. If the talk of change provides only a temporary placebo effect, then . . . I will still remain hopeful.

I stand at the edge of a field, a stubble of corn stalks, like stiff whiskers, poke through the snow. The trees are soft in the falling snow; two hawks rest in their bare branches.

My cell phone rings. A teacher friend's husband has died. Unexpectedly. Victim of a brain aneurism. Discovered when his wife got home from school.

Lenses. I think of lenses. How this friend's lens was wide-angle as she drove home. She was thinking of how happy she was to have a day off on Monday--Martin Luther King's Day, maybe. Maybe she had plans she wanted to share with her husband. But her wide angled view abruptly narrowed. Macro. Up close. The world fades away in times like these. The funeral will be Monday. Her day off.

I continued to walk along the road beside the fields, stopping when I came to the place where the bridge is out. A wide chasm splits the road in two . . . like my friend's world.

I know the snow will stop. The clouds will open, allowing the sun's rays through, and even with eyes shut tight in pain, my friend will feel their warmth, although she will not see the light for a while.
~~~~~
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.~Gilda Radner