Three Days Later - a reading (on YouTube)
I wake at 4 a.m.
with a sense so strong it feels like foreshadowing,
Like my childhood is about to play out on a much larger
stage,
Like I am still trapped within it with nowhere else to go.
Once again, I am too small to shape events around me,
Powerless to seek safety anywhere but beneath my bed,
A hiding place of no protection.
I creep past the lairs of grendel and her daughter,
The night watch drunk and sleeping,
The hall a deathly still,
Hoping I am too minuscule to notice,
Too inoffensive to draw attention,
Knowing I am offense enough.
When do I become the hero of my story?
When do I no longer have to fight?
When do I nail the monster’s arm above my bedroom door?
Relinquish hope all who enter here.
For I already have.
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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This poem came to me at 4 a.m. on the Monday before this was posted. You can work out what the title refers to from there.
It started with the disorienting feeling from the first line, which I thought about getting up and posting but didn’t because I had a low-grade, five-day headache. Line by line it emerged over the next hour. I wrote each down dutifully on my little lighted clipboard beside the bed. It required very little editing before I felt it was ready.
Picture Notes:
ReplyDeleteTrying to shoot under a bed, at night, is not the easiest thing. Especially when you have to be flat on the floor, looking through the view finder, trying to focus on a pair of boots on the other side of the bed. There is shutter speed, type of light, helpful cats: All factors to be considered. I thought it would be too dark to do at night, but in hindsight, daylight wouldn't have worked. Edward also added a flash light, which helped added enough light to illuminate the boots and the bottom of the bed without detracting from the image by creating "hotspots" on the boots. After that the image required only minimal color correction
and some cropping to give it the feeling of someone hiding under a bed, desperately hoping to remain safe.
Often I can only relate at a distance but this piece rings true to me.
ReplyDelete