I had a vision: A Poem
By Summer LoPriore
I had a vision
Of the sides of daysAnd of years,
Those lean edges resting softly
Among the muddied blue
Of everything that is.
It was there,
Only there,
In that collection of seconds dwindling to nothing,
The ones swept away and gone
By things more important,
That I saw the sun rise.
She yawned and roused and rose
In all her divinity overlooked,
And I was right there.
You have to understand—
I was right there
To witness it all unfold
In yellow ribbons cascading from the sky
Down onto my head,
And onto yours—
Did you feel it?
Did you notice?
Have you forgotten?
There are nests being laid here,
Eggs burrowed into the earth
By mothers
Who create a spiraling of sticks
And tears and a dream
Amalgamating into a microcosmic forest,
A world made just to harbor
The awaiting of a life beyond life,
On and on forever.
There is a breeze here—
A gentle touch on skin
In the light,
A whisper threading
Through the trees
Only heard in the quiet,
The perfect quiet.
And I believe,
Dear one,
That if you would just
Stand still,
In the thick of it all,
Chirping, and swirling,
And swimming around you,
Then maybe you could find this world
Beautiful again, too.
For my “Something Transformed” object for which we had to select something from Trinity’s Wakinson Library Archives, I chose a photo and wrote a poem in response. The photo, in the form of a lantern slide, depicts the nest of a Ruddy Duck with four pure white eggs burrowed in its safekeeping. This picture was taken by Herbert Keightley Job in Lower Manitoba, Canada in 1916. Job was a Boston-born author, pastor, lecturer, ornithologist, and a foundational bird photographer in the field during the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. He graduated from Harvard in the late 19th century in pursuit of becoming a pastor. After serving as one in both Massachusetts and Connecticut, Job worked as the State Ornithologist of Connecticut and as a staff member at the Connecticut Agricultural College from 1908 to 1914. He traveled around North America to photograph birds and promote their conservation. Importantly, he was greatly inspired by fellow ornithologist John James Audubon, who I know also has a presence in the Watkinson, as Chris’ project is in response to his work as it appears in Birds of America. Different from his predecessor, though, Job did not kill the birds to render them, but rather upheld the idea of their preservation in nature by instead taking photographs. He felt that “birds were creations of God and citizens had a ‘holy obligation’ to protect them” (“Herbert K. Job.”).
My poem is in relation to that closing sentiment which Job expressed. When I was sifting through the digital repository of the Watkinson, and then looking through Job’s slides, the photos of nests struck me especially. I know that Job was a nature, namely bird, photographer, and so it was his profession to capture scenes such as these. Still, though, I thought about what a beautiful thing it is to think a nest, so small, unassuming, quiet, a worthy subject of photography. And the fact that this slide of some duck’s nest has survived decades and been carefully preserved by the hands of a lineage of people who also care about things such as these was quite impactful. This photo specifically, among the many of nests, was powerful to me because it truly looked like these eggs were safe, nestled into the earth with an entire towering circle of sticks protecting them, carefully laid by their mother. The perspective of this shot, looking down upon the eggs, as if the observer were in a plane and the nest was far below added to the monumental feeling of their care. I thought about, then, what an egg is, what it means. It is a vision for the future, a dream so warmly tended to, a preservation of the next generation, and all that so follows. This idea of intentional conservation for the sake of the future, for a recognition of something’s value, is one that exists in the notion of eggs in a nest, in Job’s thoughts about the divinity of birds (that they are not things to be killed, but to be admired, not with a shotgun, but with a camera), and also in the concept of an archive in itself—such as the Watkinson which allowed me to see this photo decades later. In thinking especially about the idea of traditionally unappreciated things, like nests, holding so much value and poetry inside of them, I wrote my poem “I had a vision” in which I explore similar miracles embedded in the everyday. Besides this nest, I speak also of sunrises and gentle breezes. I really enjoyed writing this poem, having the photo on the other side of the screen the entire time, constantly looking back to it for inspiration. This is an idea that I come back to a lot—the inherent beauty of the world, the things so holy which we take for granted and overlook, occupied with other thoughts and tasks more immediate, louder, “more important.” I hope to continue using the Watkinson as a resource, especially as an artistic one, and I hope that soon I will be able to go in physically and explore it in a new way.
Bibliography
“Herbert K. Job.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Dec. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Herbert_K._Job.Herbert Keightley Job, Nest of Ruddy Duck, Lower Manitoba, Watkinson Library.
