The green of Spring and Summer envelops you such that memories which bear any shadow retreat.

The green is alive and always changing.  Shadowed memory tends to remain static and even get darker. Like winter.

 

If I remember anyone, it is those people who have loved that green.  They I can hear breathe.

There are others who paid no attention to the green.  Saw it but did not register it.

They I don’t remember when I am in the green. 

 

 

Memories Look at Me 

 

Tomas Tranströmer, 1931-2015, Swedish

Translated by Robert Fulton; from The Great Enigma, 2006

 

 

A June morning, too soon to wake,

too late to fall asleep again, 

 

 

 

Row houses in Philly in the early morning

 

 

 

I must go out – the greenery is dense

 

 

Dawn birdstong at a bamboo stand at the back of a neighbouring garden. The last place on our little streets inviting this dawn and dusk chorus. 

Cut down a month ago for more building.  Always more building.

Philly International Airport is not far.

 

 

 

Winterthur, Delaware

 

 

 

with memories, they follow me with their gaze. 

 

 

 

Black cohosh (bugbane). Winterthur, Delaware

 

 

 

They can’t be seen, they merge completely into

 

 

 

 

On Campion Hill:  Campion sundown, negative c. 2005; 2015 print, and detail with some light interference.

David Pleve, American born 1948.  Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

 

the background, true chameleons. 

 

 

 

Tilework

 

 

They are so close that I can hear them breathe

 

 

 

ShadowLife 016, image 2013, print 2018, pigment print.  David Lebe, American born 1948, loaned by the artist to an exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2018 

 

 

 

though the birdsong is deafening.

 

 

 

Mt. Cuba, Hockenville, Delaware