Foreshadow: There is a Crack in Everything

I’m trying the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge for the first time. The theme for this week is foreshadow. As the guidelines provide a broad definition, I’ve played with the theme in different ways for the photos I’m posting here. As I am a writer (poet) as well as photographer, I’ll add some words for each photo.

Young potential

Young woman playing on the street during Tzfat Klezmer Festival, Israel, 6 August 2013

Shadows and foreshadows
as the young woman strokes
her violin and calls it to sing
her dancing life into this world.

Young, talented street musician, Tzfat, Israel, Klezmer Festival, 6 August 2013

Sweet, not sour, grapes

Raisin sweet amid the ripening grapes.

Translucent green grapes
hint at sweet delight
of being ripe and ready
for this world. While
a single dried raisin
reminds of time’s essence
looming ahead.

What’s near blurs as we focus on distant sweetness.

Sometimes, we focus in the distance
seeking future sweets while the juice
of the moment blurs within reach.

Light caught in a green crystal ball

Light caught in a crystal ball
foretells the ripening fruit
as the dusky green evening
settles around the courtyard.
Tonight, music. Tomorrow,
grapes to eat. Next year, wine.

Before vintage turned to weaponry

The grape vine stretches
leafy fingers toward the broken
security glass, trying to touch
and taste sweetness past,
spilled before vintage
turned to weaponry.

Shadow lattices

Sometimes the shadows only suggest

Patterns foregrounded on wall
or floor suggest a pattern
unfolding our lives. It is
all illusion, a dance of light
and absence—no thing.
Only dreams unfold
while language glimpses
fleetingly without sounding.

Dreams unfold while language glimpses

Waiting for a window
to open to green slanted
evening light, I remember
briefly the deep wall
of nothing I once knew
so well.

The deep wall of nothing I once knew so well

There is a crack in everything, or coming unhinged

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. —Leonard Cohen

Under the rusting courtyard door,
once painted Tzfat blue,
blinding light spills
just before the sun
goes down. Long
evening rays
will soon turn
the world red.

Coming unhinged but not unglued

Coming unhinged, but not unglued,
blue rolls to rust, rust to bright nothing
of photons reflecting, the outer light
breaking through to the wall-guarded
courtyard of rock, plaster, and plants.

The door opens; shadow and light play to the trees

The door opens; shadow and light play to the trees
while the musicians around town tune up to sound
checks for the dance to be made of the night.
Klezmerim sound clarinet, saxophone, bass
and drum, while people mill around plazas
with Arab bread and labane. The day will come
for this sound, this light, this shadow
to reveal itself. Meanwhile, we will dance
until the fireworks and beyond, one hour
into the next day, and sleep into dreams
furled around a suggestive echo of worlds.

—Michael Dickel (photos and writing ©2013)