In Contrast…For Lens Artists Challenge

33 Replies
2001-2022

 

Contrast

Sun or moon and smooth or rough,
old or young and clothed or buff––
opposites contrast each other––
tough or easy, breathe or smother.
Shadows can be made with light,
though sun is opposite of night.
Sarcasm depends on this:
words that praise, but really diss.
Life consists of contrasts that
give yin for yang and tit for tat.
If you can’t find a life to fit,
just change into its opposite!
Reach for the hidden, release the found.
Contrasts make the world go round.

For Lens Artists Challenge: Contrasts

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

33 thoughts on “In Contrast…For Lens Artists Challenge”

  4. Unknown's avatarSam

    Oh Judy that is both a Great thought and such a Timely poem for me. I lay in my bed this morning thinking about the good and the bad things that have been happening to me lately. Feeling sorry for myself, and thinking mostly about the bad, wishing that I could wash some of the bad out of my system and mind, starting over with more good. A friendship that was so good, went bad~! I was thinking; wouldn’t it be nice to remove all the bad and start over with more good~?

    Then I got up and there was your poem with the answer to what I was asking myself, which I bet you did not even consider~!

    Decisions for the short time we have in life and how do we face them. They can’t always be good but do not have to always be bad either. Past loves of people and places which are now different. Some of the people on this site who post seem to always be negative and I ask myself why, but it may be their way of trying to turn the bad into something good by cleansing themself of the bad. I like your poem and your approach and will use it today to try to turn myself toward a new good direction.

    Thanks for this GOOD poem and your help to me and others who may be asking the same question~! How timely, “you smart thing~!”

    GOOD SAM

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  5. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

    Glad to be of help to you, Sam. I needed this lesson myself. I’ve been having some horrendous days lately but today every single negative turned into a positive. Guess I should write about it. it was uncanny.

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    1. SAM VOELKER's avatarSAM VOELKER

      Judy, after writing that post above, I was just finishing a note to the person I had mentioned, but had not hit “SEND”, when my phone started ringing, So often mind thoughts seem to travel~! It was her and we talked for a long time. I then hit send and forwarded your poem to her, but that was after talking for a long time and friendships HAD turned to GOOD. You may meet her someday, You would like her~! We could make a telepathic trio~! (but as far as I know, she is not much of a poet)

      SAMAGAIN

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      I loved that visitor to my Virginia creeper as well. I’ve only ever seen one but it was like a beautiful little piece of jewelry. And, not so little. It was about 4 to 6 inches long.

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      1. Martha Kennedy's avatarMartha Kennedy

        My best relationship is with someone 5000 miles away! It’s funny when we discover what we really want and what we’re really capable of. We both wish we’d had our wits about us 15 years ago but it’s OK. We know now.

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        2. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

          Web of Night
          We have been talking online for hours
          and, as usual, lost track of time.
          Now, after his good-bye,
          it would be easier to go to bed
          than to act on his reminder
          that there should be hot water
          in my hot tub tonight,
          pumped in earlier from the volcanic depths,
          left to cool all day.
          I am living in sub-tropical Mexico
          where things like volcanoes are everyday things.
          I drink the volcano.
          I swim and soak in it.
          I absorb its heat,
          draw from its power,
          grow stronger.
          This is the fountain of youth, I’ve often said.
          Too long away from it, I start to grow creaky and old––
          reversing those effects only by coming home again
          to lie in its steaming bath.
          I look up from it now
          at a night sky unlike any other––
          only the major stars distinct, like light seen through
          irregularly perforated steel. The stars standing out individually,
          between them the remarkable floss of clouds stretched
          sparse as angel hair on a Christmas tree
          to reveal the ornaments
          between.
          No one else awake in this morning hour
          so early that it is really still the night before.
          2 AM. Neither a dog’s bark nor a burro’s bray.
          No harsh staccato though the cool night air
          of air brakes of trucks
          too wide for the two-lane carretera.
          down below.
          Alone in my world.
          The clouds, while I’ve been thinking blind,
          have obscured the stars
          behind a thicker web of cotton wool.
          I think of love so far away,
          wishing it nearer but feeling it close
          as the keyboard in the room behind me.
          There are many of us
          caught in this Web of internet romance.
          Here we need not fear
          the loss of a love
          that is a part of an addiction
          to the mystery of absence
          yet words so close
          they are almost
          but not quite
          touch.

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          2. Martha Kennedy's avatarMartha Kennedy

            Very very beautiful, Judy. Wow. ❤️

            Next Lives

            In our next life we’ll calmly say our says
            Free of the convoluted tracks of mind
            That silenced us and made us run away,
            Not toward. Always away, seeming unkind,
            Our two hearts loving, yearning, and afraid.
            We stood on a small mountain. The sun set
            The full moon rose. We held hands, words unsaid.
            Facing the distant turquoise sea we let
            It pass not thinking that each moment
            Comes just once. Night fell. We turned back, running
            down the mountain, no thought that we’d lament
            Thirty years later, this lost happiness.
            “Next life,” we tell each other, “I’ve loved you,
            all this time. It has always been we two.”

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  9. slmret's avatarslmret

    When things go sour in a relationship, it’s difficult (and perhaps should be) to recover the relationship to what it once was. Turning to the opposite is often a good idea, but just as often lacks the good points of the prior relationship! Yet trying to revive the first friendship doesn’t often work well either, since that person doesn’t necessarily change just because you parted. Better to start anew, wary of the things you don’t like!

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    1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      What you say is hard to face sometimes but is so true. It’s hard not to feel like you are turning your back on someone but sometimes they make it impossible not to.

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