Feeling Connected

On the other side of these walls is a brilliant day. Dappled sunlight dancing on concrete, playing along the edges of shadows cast by moonflower and morning glory vines, mesmerizing through wavering glass. And today, the luscious feeling of connection. I love the way it sneaks up unaware before immersion. I love the way I don't know if I want to laugh or cry when it hits me. I love the way it makes me recognize a particular moment of being alive.

First, the article from The Guardian. Second, a piece that took ten years to put to bed. Third, exit stage right, grinning into the light.



Good Sunday read: Controversial Photo

"As an image of a cataclysmic historical moment it captures something that is true of all historical moments: life does not stop dead because a battle or an act of terror is happening nearby. Artists and writers have told this truth down the ages. In his painting The Fall of Icarus, the Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel depicts a peasant ploughing on as a boy falls to his death in the sea beyond: it is a very similar observation to Hoepker's. WH Auden's lines on this painting in his poem Musée des Beaux Arts apply perfectly to the photograph: "In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster …"

A Boy Falling Out of the Sky 

I can not write this piece. Glass is all

I see. A piece just shattered that falls

sparkles, twists bright light diamond like. Blood

is all I can hear. My heart beats quick

out loud and my son is at my feet.

He shall not have this sight of figures

falling, I will not let that happen.

My fingers move across his soft hair

and lift eyes to mine. Impossible

to imagine him not here today.

After breakfast when his father calls

time for daily lessons, Icarus

works equations until the king’s men

enter their home, forces eyes to move

away from the sight of all ever

known. He follows behind his father

into the heart of the labyrinth.

A feather riding on a twisted

current caught beneath it floats down safe

while still a sound, lingering longer

within the waves, that I can not name.

It is unnatural. It is man made.

I lose my sense within the image

hands can not cover eyes and ears, except

as I pretend my arms protect him.

That morning when no one could believe

the picture true there were those in there:

who’s hands had softly brushed aside hair

and placed warm lips upon small forehead:

who’s voice had moved quick to catch lost time

cried an over the shoulder good bye:

who had sang with the radio who

had quarreled with a lover or who

had made love or who had forgotten

to brush teeth or who had felt the sun:

none that could imagine time would end.

Can horror be contained? I try. Wrap

words around images like mother

of pearl trying to embrace moments

to give them meaning. I can not write

this piece can not contain this mourning.

Still, the alarm goes off to announce

another day beginning again

for us.

Colleen C. Fitzgerald

This piece is a desperate attempt to find solace within history and art from a decade of unrelenting sorrow. Eternal gratitude to those timely companions, W.H. Auden’s, Musee de Beaux Arts, and Brueghel’s, The Fall of Icarus. The staggering of stanzas is to represent columns built of nine beats and eleven lines. While writing, I also kept imagining the colons as a high arial view upon the standing towers. Horror cannot be contained and I cannot protect my children, but I can beat words through meter and form. I can hope for the best and work through the rest of it.

August 2011