Frame

The tree that had patiently framed our view
turned on us once and swelled
with an issue of birds. Each orange breast
too large for its spine, they threatened to drop
and splatter like so many fruits. I'm frightened

of birds in the first place. In Illinois
they stay the right size and only come out by ones
and twos, but I won't go barefoot. Remember
the crack of a wing in the grass? It was warmer
than grass.

I still think the window kept us straight. Twice
a day the light congealed, we could or couldn't
see the bridge for fog. Either way was reassuring.
And if someone had asked, the branch
was too parochial, we knew it

no? making order out of all that sky.
When better dyes arrived in the wagons of entrepreneurs,
the Navajo weavers knew craft and a past
from nostalgia: they began on brighter rugs.
At one point in the border of each, an erratic line

a single stitch wide joins the outside
to the pattern at the heart. On a spirit line,
does the spirit come in or depart? Our birds
had been eating what the rain turned up,
new rain got rid of the birds. I'm thinking of you.

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by Linda Gregerson, 1980

Idle in Summer

I sit in meditation in the long summer,
not a single word all day.
You ask me how can I do that?
My heart is at ease when I have nothing to do.
Fishing boats are returning in fine drizzle,
children are noisy in woods.
Northern wind suddenly turns south,
the sun sets behind a distant mountain.
I feel happy at this scene
and pour a drink to go with this great mood.
Gulls fly away from the pond.
In twos they keep coming back.

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by Gao Panlong, 1500s AD

from Night Sky

To Linda Connor


If the photographers are soul-thieves, whose soul is being stolen in a
photograph of the night sky?
         The soul of the last one to go to bed and the soul of the first one to
rise in the morning, perhaps?
         Photography is a black art like alchemy. It turns matter into spirit
and spirit into matter.
         Still, there are moments when looking at a photograph of a night
sky we have a hunch of what the word soul means, what the word infinity
encompasses.

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by Charles Simic, 1996

In 1996 the Whitney Museum published a limited edition book,
"On the Music of the Spheres," of Linda Connor's photographs of the
night sky. Charles Simic wrote a long poem, "Night Sky," to accompany
the photographs.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridge harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

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by Emma Lazarus, 1883