I am not a poet.
But I will paint you words with my photographs.
The colors of summer:
Red, yellow, purple, orange, green.
Spanish moss, glinting silver in the sunlight.
A tall, thin heron, perched on a long thin branch.Reflect with me, as we watch the live oak treeHeavy branches
Reflecting in the pond.
Ripples lazy across the surface.
I’ll show you a butterfly of black and gold
Delicately situated on flowers of pink and yellow.And there!
In the murky water
An alligator lurks, silently gliding
Biding its time.
Over there!
A spider, silhouetted against her intricate web.
Men and women and animals
Cast in bronze, frozen forever in time.
Classic beauties, all.
You’re beautiful, too.
And see! There’s more still
Brilliant lilies in hues of pink.
They live only for a day.
Will you stop to look? Won’t you?
Even decay
Silt and mud and leaves
They’re all transformed with my lens
Into something more.
You don’t care.
You just sit there.
You talk on your cellphone
Sitting beside a man
Who doesn’t exist.
ó Susan Shinn