A 2023 calendar that through poem lines and artistic photographs invites you to be with what is close in.

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Looking through my photographs of the year I am struck that what I most often take pictures of is not the large view but the close-up. What could be held in the palm of a hand. This year has been one of learning to be with what is close. After years spent with my eyes and all hopes on the next green pasture on the other side of the rise, around the bend from the present breath. I have stopped in a place. And I love this place, a simple house in a meadow on a hill in Maine. This land continually asks me to join the conversation of the here and now. The blueberries that swelled in that long abundance of July. The meadows changing conversation of daisy, yarrow and clover to goldenrod and queen anne’s lace and now to rust and seed. 

 

The poet David Whyte in his poem “Start Close In” invites us to 

 

Start with

the ground

you know,

the pale ground

beneath your feet,

your own

way to begin

the conversation.

 

And as the poet Mary Oliver said “All the ingredients are in.” This breath, this moment, this question, this tear, this blue stone, this mushroom's velvet lid, this leaf stem, this fluff of milkweed seed, this word, this snowflake melting on my tongue. I invite you to join me in engaging the close in.

 

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