Place

Brian Turner

Once in a while
you may come across a place
where everything
seems as close to perfection
as you will ever need.
And striving to be faultless
the air on its knees
holds the trees apart,
yet nothing is categorically
thus, or that, and before the dusk
mellows and fails
the light is like honey
on the stems of tussock grass,
and the shadows are mauve birthmarks
on the hills.

From All That Blue Can Be,
Dunedin: John McIndoe, 1989.

About the image

The light from the mid-day sun in Utah's canyon country is so harsh that everything flattens out . . . the landscape literally loses color and contour, the ground is dusty and shrubs seem dry and bent. Was I simply failing to have a wabi-sabi mindset and thus had missed the beauty that surrounded me?

Then dusk approached, the period photographers call "sweet light," and the land regained color and contour, shrubs and grasses becoming vibrant, so much so that in stepping through them, I wanted to be careful not to damage any.

Cedar Mesa, Utah, USA