The Lilac

On May 17th I wrote about the lone tulip in my backyard and during that entry I mentioned the lilac tree in my backyard.  A few nights back I was up at 2:30 am letting the dog out and made sure to grab the Lumix to snap a photo of the glow of this tree in the darkness.  This was shot without flash (flash would have kind of spoiled the idea of flowers glowing in the dark), at ISO 3200, f1.7 and 1/4s.

Back in August of 1999, I wrote a poem/prose titled "wasp". In that wonderful summer - the likes of which I've never even come close to experiencing again - I realized how intense, and yet temporary by their very nature, some moments or times in our life can be.  Although I'd known this before, I probably had never felt it in my bones the way I did that year.  And because of that year, I realized it forever afterwards; sometimes in joyful memory or pride, other times in longing, melancholy and nostalgia. Though the year passed, there is a big part of it that remains with me. It was a few years back that I first realized this lilac - saw it for it's brief intensity, where for only a short time each year it glows electric in the dark when I'm outside late at night. I wish it was like that all the time, wish the year was like this all the time. It's as though life (to paraphrase Steve McQueen's closing line in the brilliant film LeMans) is comprised of either being in that space, or waiting to be. But there is no other time.

wasp (excerpt)

My fear at his movements contrasts with your own composure. The red hatch of the car, raised. All at once he is free.  From the window, the inflammatory colour. You laugh at me, crossing the street, heading to dinner. I follow, my life is confused and erratic. A prisoner of the heat amplified through the glass. And I don't know what the approaching autumn will bring. I think of the wasp. The power and the life too short. Like this summer.

(c) 1999 J. Popowich