what we make...

The sketchbook is old, the once-yellow cover torn loose from the spiral, page edges furred. My mother’s name is written on the cover, her surname that of her first husband. Sometime in the 1940s she made these pencil drawings, probably in a class, exploring perspective, light and shadow.

Most of the drawings are recognizable, precise: an onion, a book of matches, a lipstick, a trashcan. But this one is a mystery. Not quite a potato, not quite a rock, sometimes it looks like a raw chicken lying on the hard platter of its shadow.

The local library, along with its catalogued holdings, houses a row of bins in the basement where visitors can leave, or claim, magazines. I frequent the bins in search of images for collage and the quirky combinations of words that turn into found poetry. I carry away piles of magazines and later return them with small rectangles excised from their pages.

I recently picked up several 5-year-old copies of a large-format photography magazine. The photos are crisp and well-composed, each capturing a moment’s vision; a few are very fine photographs. As I browsed through them, I saw an absolute parallel with poetry, with music: we set out with our tools — camera, vocabulary, notes — and from the infinite possibilities we attempt to capture something unique. Tell of sunset, chickadee, voyage, grief, in a way not quite envisioned by anyone else.

Occasionally we succeed. We find the narrow window, the slash of light that turns our vision into something recognizable, something that resonates. More often, we fill the air with dust, scratchings, rock-potato-chicken.

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