Look Both Ways

This double-exposed pinhole photograph was made to accompany the sonnet below. It’s hard to say whether the photo or the poem came first but the stimulus was a walk along the Coventry canal on a day of low spirits. The rhythm of the walking and the gentleness of the summer canal had me looking high rather than low after a few miles.

Look Both Ways
This head amongst the grass is full of seed
pulsating with rich life when ending’s fear
blurs hopes and tries to lie when I still need
to see with open eyes. Now leaving here
I tread a path which winds between the trees,
not straight nor worn but forked and born
of chance encounters where others do not flee
but talk and lead me on, feeling less torn.

The gaze upon the dirt misses the sky,
where larks and swifts so light above the world
fill hearts with lift and liberate the sigh
of flesh which loves the earth on which it’s curled.
When running down, not up, on darker days
Find seeds, high ground, a lens to look both ways.

Medium: Photopolymer gravure
Paper: Fabriano Rosaspina Bianco 285g
Date: 2018
Image size: 18cm x 18cm / 7in x 7in
Size unframed: 28cm x 28cm / 11in x 11in
Price unframed: £125
Edition size: 10