some say we return to stars light returning to source but I won’t say it to you as your child left too soon
instead I’ll focus on moonlight grief rippling across the land a sliver of silver beside Venus how small words feel now
once he pulled my giggly son across a green lawn over and over “you can stop anytime,” I said he shrugged, “but he’s so happy”
some say we will meet again across the rainbow bridge but I won’t say it to you as your boy left too soon *Dedicated to my aunty Nel and my cousin Josh. I wish I could be there today to celebrate his life with you. He will be greatly missed. I love you all.
Labor Day weekend I visited our local Chalk It Up event, a free open-art festival for families. My daughter had the privilege of opening the show with her G.I.R.L.S. Rock Sacramento band. One of her friends was a featured alumni artist and created the first image below. This event has become a family tradition and this year felt even more special with lots of our friends and family attending. Life has been busy, but it’s never too late to share.
Let me know if you have a favorite image and have a fantastic day!
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The last photo is of my gorgeous daughter. I’m so proud of her. Keep playing!
Photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
Mom said she wanted witchy photos in the woods. She wanted to dance in the moonlight and howl. She wanted pointy hats and dark makeup. She wanted her vision of us to be captured forever.
What she didn’t say is generational pain lives in our bones and she wants us to be free. She didn’t say mortality knocks and time moves oh so quickly. She didn’t say let’s be stronger, my dearies, and stop letting others control our happiness. She didn’t have to.
Mom said she wanted witchy photos in the woods. I gave them to her, minus the hats.
This is for you Mom, the one who gives and loves so big, who taught me to be strong, and who carries so much and still laughs. I hope you like the photos and know how much you are loved.
“You’re breaking generational curses. That’s why this doesn’t come easy for you. You’re who your bloodline has been waiting for.” —unknown
These photos are of my mom, my daughter, and me. All photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW, except the last one and it’s a screenshot from a small video I took on my iPhone 13. My talented daughter took the photos I’m in.
Last week I took my mom and 5-year-old nephew to the Sacramento Zoo. We saw plenty of lovely animals, but the flamingos on their nests stole the show. Let me know if you have a favorite image and I hope you are having a wonderful day.
“When I draw it, I’m going to make my skin see-through and what you’ll see is that all the animals in the zoo of me have broken out of their cages.”—Jandy Nelson
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All photos were taken by me using an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
Last week I took a much-anticipated trip to visit my mother, connect with a dear poetry friend, and show the city of Seattle to my daughter. It was a feast for the photographic eye. Please join me for a series of posts (6 total) exploring the Pacific Northwest and let me know if you have a favorite photo.
“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
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These photos were taken with an Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW.
When children are small you can sprinkle nutritional yeast on millet and tell them it’s fairy dust. With a word, it becomes so. Such is the power of language. What if we could do the same with our dreams? Here’s a poem and flash fiction rambling on about such things. Let me know what you think.
little shadow
perched on a purple wall staring at my sleeping child
what do you see shadow bird?
do you see. see like me?
my grandfather became cloud grandmother became butterfly.
I sit in her chair. I sing with his voice.
what will be left for her when I,transform?
maybe I become you. maybe I watch from a wall.
flying with one word. staying with another. word.
dream me alive. over and over and over. clove and nutmeg. owl spreading wings.
forest hears, nothing.
another dream
Transform
One night during a dream of chaos and war a woman gives birth to a baby with hair the color of fresh snow. The baby blinks at the woman with eyes as green as ancient ferns and coos like a dove. What if instead of forgetting the baby when she woke the woman decides to name her Mabel and she becomes as real as coffee.
The woman dresses the dream baby in clothes the color of fresh marigolds and wears her close to her chest in a carrier woven of the softest wool. She takes the baby out into the rain and her laugh becomes lightning. The world sparks around them and glows brighter.
The plants in the woman’s house grow with the baby—greener and taller, greener and taller until the woman is forced to cut through them with a large knife, like an explorer in a jungle. She and the baby laugh at the silliness of it as birds make nests in her living room and a family of rabbits discovers the perfect place to live within her closet.
They spend most days outdoors so Mabel can make the grass thicker, the trees taller, and the flowers bolder. The neighbors don’t know what’s making their gardens grow and the woman decides not to tell them. Not everyone believes as strongly as she does and she fears their disbelief will pull the child away.
When Mabel starts walking the woman takes her outside in the middle of the night and upon seeing the full moon the child begins to sing. The tiny lilting notes cause the stars to dance and the moon to move closer and closer to the Earth. The woman knows this won’t go unnoticed and will have terrible consequences, but she hesitates to act because love defies logic and gravity. Love defies most things.
Mabel however makes the choice for her, wiggling out of her grasp and floating toward the moon. The baby with hair as white as snow returns back into the dream where she was born and the woman walks home alone. Her house feels different but she smiles the same because Mabel is as real as coffee and her physical absence changes nothing. She wraps herself in wool and dream walks to visit her child.
He had a picture of me on his work desk. A boa constrictor wrapped around my neck. He’d say, “She wasn’t even scared.”
His framed pride didn’t match my fear, so I pretended.
Not a snake charmer, I learned to drink venom. Walk through glass. Palms up, always. Let me prove how good I am, like sweet orange trees. Climb. Take cover beneath my limbs, I’ll take all the blame. Sorry for the storm, for freezing pomegranate hearts. Orphan without warmth—I know.
Look, watch me spin so bright. Sing to the moon. Ride through a rice field, kick dust onto the snow-white cranes. See me create starlight babies with magical breath— lean in. Smell them. Part me. Part you. Us.
Branches. You see? Beautiful are the buds bearing your blue eyes.
Maybe you had to move away. Once, no twice. You needed to be further from this mess; this me.
Further and further. I see.
Neck, boa, constrict— my words press like sap pushing through bark. Not fearless, but what will too late feel like when words sit stuck inside. No, say it all. Look, do you see? “She wasn’t even
“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”—Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais
I’ve passed the Tomales Catholic cemetery for years and always wanted to stop. On Thanksgiving, I finally did. Wandering the grounds taking pictures of the beautiful statues, some dating back to the 1800s, my mind wandered to my own lineage. I have no sacred grounds to honor my ancestors and so I choose to think of them.
Hawks circled above me and the sun shone far too bright in the early afternoon sky. I felt a variety of feelings from unease to joy. I wondered about the women who came before me and the roads they walked. Gratitude flooded my body. My camera is a time machine. A lens to see more than I can.
Walk with me.
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Photos were taken with Olympus OM-D and edited with ON1 Photo RAW
open and shut them a game with toddlers to still their hands to make them giggle I play it in my head to still my fears open and shut them ambulance out the window stretcher in the hall two paramedics in blue electrodes on his chest it’s not like last time give a little clap, clap, clap take me back to stillness no ripples spreading out just flat glassy ease a breath and a sigh open and shut them pajama pants, slip-on shoes home before sunrise coffee while he sleeps hugs when he wakes put them in your lap, lap, lap
“Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.”—Ray Bradbury
October was a blur of busyness and I’m behind in everything—laundry, dishes, yard work, and blogging. Life is like that sometimes.
My month included poetry night. Housesitting. A music festival. Helping my sister-in-law after emergency surgery. Becoming a godmother. Dungeons & Dragons. Five pumpkin patches with my nephew. Halloween traditions. Movies. Haunted houses. Lots of treats.
My photo assignment, which I’m posting four days late, was to capture the fall season. I took these photos at our annual family outing to Rickey Ranch last week. Not my best work, but who doesn’t love cute animals and a beautiful sky.
To everyone starting NaNoWriMo—happy writing! I’m not participating this year but I’ll root you on. Bring on November!
Bridgette Tales 