Wherever You Are

Chatham Manor, Sedum, September 2025

I am fortunate to have my very own personal poetry guide. I’ve followed Jan Falls and her Heart Poems for years. She faithfully delivers poetry to my Inbox on a regular basis. Each post includes her own thoughtful interpretation of the poem. Jan shares, line-by-line, how and why the poem is significant for her. How the poem makes her feel and act differently. How the poetry helps her to live in this world with authenticity. In this way, she has become a dear friend. Jan introduces me to poetry that touches my heart and helps me to see the meaning of my photographs. Here’s the poem she shared today.

 

wherever you are
 
Wherever you are, be there. Take up space. Occupy the full dimension.
Unfold the map of your body. Celebrate its topographical wonder,
its unpredictable weather. Make a pool of your movements, then swim
through the ripples, parting the room with your footsteps. Make no apology
for the squeak of your soles, how your jacket swishes at your thighs, that the dust
is making you sneeze. Consider it all a kind of orchestra, you tuning the keys,
you lifting the horn of your whole self to the air. Let the notes of you blast out,
at a register and speed that won’t leave you hungry or empty. Let anyone hear,
as they walk by with their shoulders up, pretending not to listen. Wherever you are,
remember why you are here: to sing.

—by Maya Stein

Teaching Tools

Wow, taking photos in bright, high contrast light is a challenge. The farm doesn’t open to visitors until 9am, so I can’t take pictures during the beautiful soft light of early, early morning. I make the most of the situation. These morning walks are hands-down the best thing I do for myself. I am my best self during these photo walks—and often for the rest of the day. My most grounded. My most self-assured. My safest and most challenged at the same time. The best I can do with words is to say that I feel expansive.

Braehead Farm, Pumpkins | September 2025

I am happy taking the pictures, but then I am perplexed as to how to process them. What shall I do when much of the subject is dirt? When the scene is the deep nature of things and nature is often decaying and disordered, chaotic and cluttered. The subject is not clearly defined; it is up to me to direct the viewer’s eye to what and how I see.

I think a lot about how to see, in all of its meanings. I read a wonderful post by Nedra Glover Tawwab, What we Know Now: Showing Ourselves Grace for Past Decisons. I love her take on hindsight.

Hindsight is a gift, not a shaming tool, but we often use it as the latter. We tell ourselves that if we hadn’t ignored that red flag, or hadn’t listened to this person, or had listened to our gut, we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in. Hindsight is not meant for us to beat ourselves up, it’s meant to offer us lessons. Hindsight provides us with information that we can use in the future, not give ourselves a hard time about the past. We don’t always make the best choices or listen to our own instincts. That’s a part of life . . . Past mistakes are teaching tools.

The Last Days of Summer

I am not usually a fan of summer. Too much sunshine and not enough rain here in the South. Schedules packed with forced fun. But this summer was different, as I mostly loafed. It would be easy to count taking pictures as work, but it wasn’t. It might seem that I have traveled a good bit, and I have. But mostly around and around in a big circle with my home as the center point. I have taken a good many pictures by showing up and meeting life with curiosity, openness, and gratitude. These last days of summer are bittersweet; I have seen flowers bloom that I never expected to see. And that is enough.

Chatham Manor Roses| Fredericksburg, Virginia | September 2025

Chatham Manor, Lantana Near the Greenhouse | Fredericksburg, Virginia | September 2025

Overleaf

In my study of bookmaking, I learned a new word. Overleaf. An adverb, meaning on the other side of a page (a leaf) of a book. In practicality, this might look like the words I scribble on the back of an image (the date, location, subject or some other anecdote). The stories are explained in detail overleaf.

Taken in West Point, Virginia, on the last weekend of summer, these pictures are a bittersweet good-bye to the season. In this small town, the Mattaponi and Pamunkey rivers meet up to form the York River. The paper mill is the town’s largest industry and the entire town has as distinctive odor associated with the process. Dave and I have vivid memories of West Point as we drove through this town on the journey from our hometown of Colonial Beach to and from Williamsburg where we both attended The College of William & Mary. Neither of us were experienced drivers at the time, and highway driving was a foreign concept. So, we took the back roads from Colonial Beach to Montross to Tappahannock, on to Central Garage and Westpoint, and finally Williamsburg. The landscape was our map and each mile was marked by either the expectations of a new semester or the anticipation of a home-cooked meal and hugs from our mothers.