Common Enchantments

By MaryElizaR

A really good sunrise

I thought we were supposed to be cloudy today but the rising sun greeted me out the dining room window when I went to get me coffee.  Grabbing the Canon SX60,  I tried the creative HDR mode which was natural, art standard, art vivid, art bold, and art embossed.   This photo is the art bold as the colors are really popped and saturated but it is really close to the art vivid.   The art embossed looks like a layer of crinkly texture has been laid over the photo.   This setting might be useful when I want to take a watercolory type of photo as in reflections or intentional blur.     I am not really a fan of HDR as there are so many landscape photos out that have that HDR look and they all look the same.      I might use this mode sometimes but it won't be a regular thing.

I posted the photo on my Instagram account after I had taken it along with a portion of a Mary Oliver poem that I had read this morning while drinking my coffee.  I had gotten a book of Selected Poems from the library on Tuesday with poems that were not in the other book that I have of hers.    The poem was actually  called "Morning" and was about watching a cat in the morning but I loved her thoughts as they could apply to anything.   

This is the poem.

"Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps her bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
What more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her,
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me."

Can't you just see all of this poem happening in your mind? I felt that the words were just for me this morning...coffee smelling good, the dog rubbing along my leg, hubby making noise upstairs and this sunrise.."everything wonderful around me."

Mary Oliver died today in Florida at age 83.  She was probably the only poet that I read over and over again.  I have two of her books, Upstream which is mostly prose, and Devotions, a compilation of her poems she selected and published in 2016.  There are many others besides the one I got from the library.  What possessed me to get that book this week?  Strange.    Her words were not fancy words, she wrote as if she was talking to you or telling a story.   She had an amazing way of sharing her love and ideas about nature which is probably why I love her poems so much.  They just speak to me in so many ways.

In other news, I got to the eye doctor and she fitted me  with two new prescription contact lenses to try. Upped my far vision just a little and the left eye is for close up.  They seem to be working well!    I can see really good!!! Yeah!       

Have a good Friday tomorrow!  

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