she weeps her portrait,
tears dropping into puddles,
irritating passersby,
delighting little girls
with red rubber boots
and rainbows on umbrellas.
she tries to tell them:
“I am alive, you are alive;
I have seen you there,
drip, drop, passing by,
hello, there’s water
in your hair.”
“Look up, look up!
There’s life where
you’re not looking;
I see yours; look at mine!
But if you can’t look up,
Look down; here is life.”
As a photographer and an artist, I’ve learned a lot about the importance of perspective and the importance of changing that up. Engaging your senses with something can alter everything you thought you understood. It may make you feel things you’ve not felt before; it often gives me a way to communicate things I didn’t know how to say.
Have you ever climbed a tree? Sat under it? Listened to the wind in its leaves? Noticed the patterns etched into its bark? Ask a tree its story, and I think you’ll find that it is telling you yours. Trees hold so many perspectives, so many ways of looking at life. They are placeholders, boundaries, centerpieces. They teach me to see the timeless, changing with the seasons and the climates where they grow, yet somehow remaining unchanged.
When I took this photo, I was trying to explain how I felt being surrounded by these ancient live oaks on a historical plantation outside Charleston, South Carolina. I knew I couldn’t possibly capture them all in my lens (there was practically a forest of them in this place), but I wanted to communicate the awe they inspired in me with their history predating even the plantation’s story.
I tried several different angles with my camera before I noticed the reflection in the river where they’d sunk their roots, and I filled my lens up with their depth and fullness, finally receiving the story they were telling me, finding my feeling in an unexpected place. In this image, you can barely see the trees above the water, yet the story told from this perspective invites the viewer who wasn’t there into the story these trees were telling of a life lived well and long, of seasons come and gone, of past and present and future hopes, deep roots reaching proud and high as they kept watch over the stories beneath.
______________________
TRY IT
Let’s see some trees in ways we may have never noticed them before.
This month, see if you can uncover a new perspective on, about, or even from a tree. Stand back, come close, climb it, look above or below, into, or on the tree, and show something that speaks to you. Look at its surroundings, maybe find its reflection in a puddle, a pond, a window, or a mirror. Learn a little of its history. What is the most important thing your tree is trying to tell you?
Once you find your photo – or even your poem – post it on Instagram, on your blog, or on a public Facebook post, and please share the link with us at Tweetspeak Poetry in the comment box.
Be sure to post your submission by Friday, April 26. I will be collecting a few favorites to feature next month!
