Now a poet in my 50th year,
I have settled on the mountain –
and I ponder the gentle streets,
the silent-blue church spires
and the listless Conemaugh.
Here, among the Alleghenies,
in a chair near the jukebox,
I spent a year sipping lager,
a parishioner to the vibrations
of a Johnstown congregation.
Each night someone is there
feeding the hopeful jukebox,
Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen,
as the thinning light births stars
over the wild onion side
of the mountain, reflecting
the rail-lights of the Inclined Plane –
and every evening someone new comes in,
and they are regaled with stories
about relentless rains and the flood,
and the way people were grasped
by the hands of the raging river,
flung sideways like flat rocks
skipping over water and water.
The words ring gently poetic
across the bar, with a voice
so familiar it feels like your own,
and it penetrates your very heart
as naturally as lightning seeks the ground,
and the artfulness fills me with hope
that someday I will write this well,
pierce as deeply as the poets at the bar.
We interrupt this message to inform you that some horrible thing happened to someone you don’t know somewhere far away, and our complete lack of respect for the victim’s privacy is brought to you by Xanex.
I turn off the TV, and the yellow dog
that never cared all that much for me
paces briefly past the loveseat
before jumping up to splay
her body across my aging legs
And I can’t help but feel her disappointment
that my legs are not my wife’s
and my feet have no pink slippers
and there are no balls of yarn
being wound by rhythmic hands
I think I must be getting a taste
for what my wife felt every evening
sitting in this chair with our yellow dog
and it really is quite nice, being chosen
to be a splayed upon companion
Trapped by a dog across my legs
because I dare not move a muscle
and risk disturbing the old girl
who spent the day pacing the house
looking in vain for a lost mother
I’ll never be able to explain
in terms a dog could understand
that I couldn’t bring her back home
and that they shut off the ventilator
before I was even allowed to say goodbye
This house is as quiet as clay
the furnace seems to have gone out
because it feels colder somehow
yellow dog is my last reason to live
and she isn’t breathing anymore
It occurs to me in these numb, small hours
that my wife would say, as a poem, it’s cliché
“but it has good bones,” she’d offer up
and I’d joke about “bones” in a dog poem
before heading out to the barn for a shovel.
One Lens
In 1984, I was cutting classes to develop yearbook pictures. The red light was on, the door was closed, life was good. I was awkward in school. Photography gave me an early excuse to delve deeply into a complicated endeavor that held my interest and garnered positive attention.
In the 80s, glass was good. I was shooting Minolta gear, and it was gnarly man, totally tubular. My parachute pants were perfect for photography. Lots of pockets, lots of gadgets.
I didn’t belong to a photography group. The only real guidance I received was from Mr. B., the high-school photography guru. He was faculty, and an artist. When he spoke about his passion for photography, I remember how intense he was. It was infectious. Mr. B. signed a whole book of passes for me, and I would use them to get out of classes – sometimes to shoot an event, sometimes because I was just bored with school. Like I said, life was good.
Mr. B. felt that fisheye lenses, and zoom lenses for that matter, polluted in the pure waters of honest photography. He advocated for a single lens. For Mr. B., a photographer needed a lens that captured light like the human eye captures light. This means something in the 50mm range. A photographer with one lens has to work harder to get the shot. This means thinking more carefully about the end result before pressing the shutter. It also means missing out on many shots that are easy to capture with more versatile lenses.
That was over three decades ago. I have continued to enjoy the art of photography, both commercially and for pleasure. I recently returned to film for a brief affair, and the nostalgia was both bliss and inspiration. Shooting film forced me to change my routine. You only get one lens. Changing a lens in the middle of a roll will ruin the film. Not only that, but film costs money. When I’m shooting film, I choose my subject more carefully, compose my shot more thoughtfully. I want to make every shot count because I’m paying for it on both ends. I have to buy the film, and the chemicals to develop it. Most expensively, it takes a lot of time to do it well.
Returning to the constraints of a single prime lens (fixed focal point) felt great. I felt young, like I was working for it. With each satisfying crunch of the shutter, I was swept back in time, to those nostalgic days when photography was pure art for me. There was no thought about my Facebook page, or selling a print. I also felt like I was honoring Mr. B.
I don’t plan to stop shooting digital images. But beginning this fall, I do plan to return to my roots by using a single fixed lens through the end of the year, maybe longer. I’ve chosen 35mm as my prime focal point. When I venture out my door, I’ll be leaving home with one camera and one lens. Yes, I’ll be missing out on a lot of shots I would have captured, but those moments will be part of the experience. I expect that coming to peace with the fact that I can’t photograph everything I see will allow me to appreciate the beauty of those moments without the mediation of a camera. I appreciate setting down my cell-phone when I go to dinner with my wife. I do it to be present with her. It’s worth it.
I expect that with the right attitude, when I’m trudging around Pennsylvania this fall, many more moments will feel like that. The images I do capture and decide to share will be posted here: https://glennlyvers.com/fall-2020-one-lens-35mm/
