Francine Schwartz, Dancing Shadows

excerpt

Dancing Shadows

Author: Francine Schwartz
Photographer: Susan Fan-Brown
Publisher: Blurb, 2010
Hard cover: $34.95
Soft cover: $24.95
ISBN: 978-1-4507-2022-9

Memories are often obscured by secrets and shadows — moving, blending, changing from one to the other. But sometimes they emerge in light so clear it is as if all the years between then and now are erased.

These poems and photographs glimpse into that realm of memories — where emotions and visions that we can’t always express live in our psyches and are part of who we are. Glimpses into our souls — that for a moment in time are there and then, like dancing shadows — go away.

Francine Schwartz is drawn to language that opens the door to dreams, feeling, and individual interpretation. Her poems blend what is revealed with what is hinted to capture the essence of a moment in time.

Her poetry has appeared in various publications, including Bewildering Stories, where she was given the Editors’ Choice Award.

“The poems in this volume were inspired by Peter, who knew me from that first moment on Vallejo Street when we watched our shadows dancing on the sidewalk.”

Gone

In the grass
by the tree
we’d been laughing,
happy about something.

And this time it felt as if
it wasn’t a dream,
that you were really there
and I was there with you.

The moment lingered,
the certainty extended
until, in the sunshine of morning,
you were gone.

Movies of Our Minds

It’s an old story
told and retold,
of not knowing what you had
until it’s gone.
Happiness realized
more clearly
later, watching
Reruns of yesterday
stored forever
in the recesses of our minds.
We take out the old tapes,
run them through the projector
and relive it all.
Movies of our minds.
So it all plays even better than
before.

Air

Something stirs,
a moving shadow on the wall
fencing the reflection of wind chimes
spiraling endlessly
in the breeze.

Listening to the silhouettes
of my imagination,
I feel a gentle current move
past my lips,
lifting my hair in flapping waves.
And then I know
you’re not gone.
You’re my air —
how can the air be missing?

Photographer Susan Fan-Brown sees movement between the ever-changing moments of nature, the shimmering subtleties amidst the lights and shadows. She focuses on the simplicity of the essential elements. The photographs in this volume are a tribute to nature’s miracles — a visualization of the magic and beauty in the world that surrounds us.