Irridescence

I’m writing some difficult poems about loss—my father, seventeen years ago (but for all time); the sun.  I’ve been recently disturbed by the idea that the sun might be cooling, as some scientists think, and by all that would mean.  Hard to express, of course, having to consider such enormous metaphysical concepts, but the same way I tend to photograph big things that don’t come across well, like waterfalls or the Grand Canyon, by focusing on a single sunlit waterdrop or a little red stone at the brink of such vastness, I’ve closed the latter poem at least tentatively with the slight, ephemeral details that cause me most sadness to think of not seeing ever again. 

It all comes down to irridescence, in the end—whether in a waterdrop or in the human spirit.

image:  Two soap bubbles, illustrating iridescent colours, against a foliage background. Photograph taken at Traquair House, Scotland on the 1st August 2003 by BDB