FanStory.com - A Loving Lensby K. Olsen
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If I were a visual artist.
Daydreams from the Ashes
: A Loving Lens by K. Olsen
    If You Were An Artist... Contest Winner 

To catch a kingfisher on perfect wing,

the spreading of each delicate feather,

frozen in a moment of blissful flight—

all with a simple click, a shudder of a shutter;

this would be merely the beginning,

of a love affair with light and shadow,

capturing the essence of people

as silhouette or portrait detail:

their weathering doubts and hopeful dreams

as brilliant light rediscovered in a dark room,

like Persephone descending and arising again

as a spring of life in vibrant color.

 

It is a delicate thing, shaken out until visible:

jubilant moments taken at the very peak of rapture

or the depths of sorrows preserved in amber,

glimpses into a past that fade far slower

than our fragile memories do,

even well-thumbed and yellow.

 

To tell a story in a thousand words,

never lifting a pen;

instead, to show and let my subjects speak

in silence, yet their own faces, own words.

For the very best capture things

not only as they are,

but in landscape and background and framing

more honest than a half-remembered fable.

So powerful, the very presence of them

changes our eyes’ perception of the world.

 

Arms spread before an army—

A fist upraised in solidarity and pride—

First steps on a world so pondered at in poetry—

Starvation and a vulture—

Dust clinging to a careworn woman—

Guns and fire that mark our cruelty—

A man of purpose and a spinning wheel—

Roses and mountains tendered with love—

The powerful and the ordinary,

the expression of the human soul,

all mingled as impressions on paper,

each as unique and precious

as a grain of sand in the hourglass of Time.

If You Were An Artist...
Contest Winner

Recognized

Author Notes
I did not take this picture, but it is of my parents together well before I was born. I figured I should replace the abstraction of ink art, now that it is in the book of poems.

     

© Copyright 2024. K. Olsen All rights reserved.
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