The BLOG writing which I do every day is the evolutionary outgrowth of a journal I kept for many years… writing in it at least a line, usually more, every day.  The writing was a solitary thing, done for me alone, with no intention of sharing it with anyone.  Over the years the journal has taken a slightly different forms.  A few years ago the Internet made a more public form of the journal possible. The journal with a bit of writing and always at least one photograph became the daily exercise that produced these posts.  A friend asked me today how and why I do it… on what experience is it based.  Here’s the way it happened today:

I went out with my camera late when the sun was low in the west and saw my shadow stark against a beige wall.  I snapped it, but I had taken some other pictures and didn’t know until I got back to my computer for the editing task that the shadow picture would be the photo du jour. As I was developing the shadow picture, I thought about an exercise I did once for a month.  It was the month of February in 1990.  I remember wanting to compel myself to write something every day that would take the form of poetry, and whenever I could manage it to be done with the language of  poetry.  The rules I made for myself were simple.  I would write eight stanzas of six lines each; the first, third, fifth, and seventh stanzas would be Jerral Miles, the real, the literal one, talking.  The second, fourth, sixth, and eighth stanzas would be the other Jerral Miles, the one few other people ever see…a sort of alter ego… an imaginary debate partner… a mostly cooperative imaginary friend/self who would answer in the next stanza whatever I had begun with a previous stanza.  The second stanza would be his response to whatever I had introduced as the subject for the day…  I hoped that altogether the eight stanzas would be a poem.  It worked… sort of.

The following poem was done Monday, February 19, 1990.  The shadow made me think of it.

There was a time when my Father

Was immediate, present, a presence

That had something to do with every day of my life.

Then death came much too soon

And snuffed out not only his life for him

But the fact of his continuing existence in mine.

Good fathers, bad father, indifferent fathers,

All brands, kinds, shapes of fathers

That extend their own orientation to living

As surely as if it were genetically imprinted.

And who can say for sure it is not,

On the lives of their children.

My Father was and is the biggest mystery

And the most obvious presence in my childhood.

He was and is big and powerful,

Determining everything for all of us,

My Mother and sisters and brothers,

All shaped by what he was and did.

Why do you say he was a mystery?

Didn’t you see him every day

And hear his laughter and his anger

And his plans for himself and for you?

Didn’t you look closely at his face, his eyes

And see there who he was?

I don’t know if I ever dared look closely at him.

I wish I had looked long into his face

At least once when I had the chance

To memorize the wrinkles around his eyes

And study the pattern of his mustache

Against the handsome face my Mother loved.

Is it possible to close your eyes

And reconstruct his face or to listen

With some inner ear to hear again his voice,

His laughter perhaps or even his harshness

When he in anger or impatience spoke your name

And turned himself fully to you alone.

I wonder if he ever turned himself to me alone

Abandoning all thought of everything else

To see only me, to know only me in all the world,

Just the two of us, he and I?

I remember at least two quarrels,

But I don’t remember how he looked in them.

Perhaps quarrels aren’t the best times to remember.

The times when dinner was being brought to the table

Or when he was driving the car would be better…

Or to remember getting ready for bed 

Or drinking his coffee in the morning

Or talking with friends… but not a quarrel.