Still

Somewhere in Durham, NC, 1982

I recently found a bunch of letters from friends and lovers in a box at the back of my closet. I also found a trove of negatives from a documentary photography class I took as a sophomore at UNC in 1982. I'd forgotten about the family that I visited over a period of three months and chronicled and with whom I became friends. I moved away. Still I remember developing them in the darkroom, my hands immersed in the bath, the slippery feel of the paper blooming shadows and light, the hands of the boy I loved mixed up with mine, his mouth.

Saturday morning. Complacencies of the peignoir.

Still. What makes me "happy" is fifteen minutes in bed meditating, then reading about authors I love and their new books, then hearing Sophie in the room down the hall humming again after more than a month of silence. Also, Costa Rican coffee from the man I love who is out there somewhere taking photos of burrowing owls.











Field Guide

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious dement of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That's all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Tony Hoagland