where clouds are going
discover dreams never knew
sky above is blue

Adapted from the song, Flora by Enya.

Lovers in the long grass
Look above them
Only they can see
Where the clouds are going

Only to discover
Dust and sunlight
Ever make the sky so blue
Afternoon is hazy
River flowing

All around the sounds
Moving closer to them
Telling them the story
Told by Flora

Dreams they never knew
Silver willows
Tears from Persia
Those who come

From a far-off island
Winter Chanterelle lies
Under cover
Glory of the sun in blue

Some they know as passion
Some as freedom
Some they know as love
And the way it leaves them

Summer snowflake
For a season
When the sky above is blue
When the sky above is blue

Lying in the long grass
Close beside her
Giving her the name
Of the one the moon loves

This will be the day she
Will remember
When she knew his heart was
Loving in the long grass

Close beside her
Whispering of love
And the way it leaves them
Lying in the long grass

In the sunlight
They believe it’s true love
And from all around them
Flora’s secret

Telling them of love
And the way it breathes, and
Looking up from eyes of
Amarantine

They can see the sky is blue
Knowing that their love is true
Dreams they never knew
And the sky above is blue

that imaginative
quality is expected from
any form of art

For me, a photograph begins as the visualization of the image which represents the excitement and the perception of that moment and situation.

The print represents excitement, perception, and expression (performance).

Meaning is found in the final print and only in terms of the print itself.

For me, this meaning may vary a little over time and circumstance.

For the viewer, the meaning of the print is his meaning.

If I try to impose mine by intruding descriptive titles, I insult the viewer, the print, and myself.

From The Autobiography of Ansel Adams by Ansel Adams, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1985.

As I understand it, from the writings of Ansel Adams, Mr. Adams could visualize the print he could make from a photograph of something in front of him.

The process was to capture the scene on a negative and then create the image in his mind through the print.

And once Mr. Adams got into the darkroom, he began to paint with light or so says one of his assistants.

He said something along the line of that the negative was the score and the print was the music.

While I miss my darkroom days, I am not sure I miss it so much CT with what can be done today … and I would enjoy seeing what Mr. Adams could do with his images.

It is still the person who begins the visualization of an image in much the same way you might say it is the cook, not the kitchen.

When Artificial Intelligence can begin as the visualization of the image which represents the excitement and the perception of that moment and situation, call me

climbing carrying
carrying farther, higher
until string breaks and …

Air from another life and time and place,
Pale blue heavenly air is supporting
A white wing beating high against the breeze,

And yes, it is a kite! As when one afternoon
All of us there trooped out
Among the briar hedges and stripped thorn,

I take my stand again, halt opposite
Anahorish Hill to scan the blue,
Back in that field to launch our long-tailed comet.

And now it hovers, tugs, veers, dives askew,
Lifts itself, goes with the wind until
It rises to loud cheers from us below.

Rises, and my hand is like a spindle
Unspooling, the kite a thin-stemmed flower
Climbing and carrying, carrying farther, higher

The longing in the breast and planted feet
And gazing face and heart of the kite flier
Until string breaks and — separate, elate—

The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall.

A Kite for Aibhin by Seamus Heaney as it appears in Human Chain by Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).

sunrise ever on
this stage is acted God’s calm,
annual drama

Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God’s calm, annual drama,
Gorgeous processions, songs of birds,
Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul,
The heaving sea, the waves upon the shore, the musical, strong waves,
The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The flowers, the grass, the lilliput, countless armies of the grass,
The heat, the showers, the measureless pasturages,
The scenery of the snows, the winds’ free orchestra,
The stretching, light-hung roof of clouds—the clear cerulean, and the bulging,
silvery
fringes,
The high dilating stars, the placid, beckoning stars,
The moving flocks and herds, the plains and emerald meadows,
The shows of all the varied lands, and all the growths and products.

From A Carol of Harvest for 1867 by Walt Whitman as published in The Galaxy, an American monthly magazine founded by William Conant Church and his brother Francis P. Church in 1866, according to Wikipedia.

Also according to WIkipedia, Whitman’s position as a Galaxy author was important to his personal fortunes and his literary reputation. The Galaxy was respectable, it was popular, and it paid generously. It also provided a venue where Whitman could join with other writers in exploring the meaning of literary nationalism and cultural democracy for the new era.

Paid generously may be the most important two words in the lives of too many poets, artists and writers through all of history.

As Jim Harrison said once, “Just like all the writers’ schools have created less variety—there’s a sameness. I said once that the lowa Writers School on a yearly basis outproduces the English romantic movement. It’s all a delusion. What are you going to do with four thousand M.F.A.’s? It’s ludicrous.”

But the sunrise’s everyday in the God’s annual drama

Gorgeous processions, songs of birds.

Sunrise, that fullest feeds and freshens most the soul.

Generous, too, God, is.

on the level sand
between the sea and land … what
shall I build or write

Based on poem XLV. Smooth between sea and land in More Poems by A.E. Houseman, (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1936)

Smooth between sea and land
Is laid the yellow sand,
And here through summer days
The seed of Adam plays.

Here the child comes to found
His unremaining mound,
And the grown lad to score
Two names upon the shore.

Here, on the level sand,
Between the sea and land,
What shall I build or write
Against the fall of night?

Tell me of runes to grave
That hold the bursting wave,
Or bastions to design
For longer date than mine.

Shall it be Troy or Rome
I fence against the foam,
Or my own name, to stay
When I depart for aye?

Nothing: too near at hand,
Planing the figured sand,
Effacing clean and fast
Cities not built to last
And charms devised in vain,
Pours the confounding main.