(Photo Essay and Epistolary to a Soul Unknown)
By Brian Michael Barbeito
The towns are growing fast, morphing into little cities. There is obviously no cap on building, on development. Yet as people and groups argue over this and that, I go out to walk the still vast and interesting forests and fields…
At the end of one woodland there is a passageway that opens to the fields. It is actually framed, this passageway, by sumac with its tropical-looking leaves and ever-deep red parts that juxtapose against the azure firmament.
The field has a swath cut through and a few stands of trees. That’s an area with an auspicious feeling-atmosphere, a place where a soul encountering it encounters a sense of meditation and contemplation, a whimsical-wondrous meaning.
What else is there besides the green and plain world open? Butterflies like Monarch, but also smaller ones blue and others with peculiar dots and designs. Birds calling out. Sometimes a distant owl hooting. The goldenrod swaying for summer breeze. Milkweed and look at its details and shades of colour. It’s offering you some open secret, speaking of heart and beauty, calm benevolence and nature’s decorum.
Yes the towns are getting dense and growing too fast. But, still the verdant forest and rustic fields are there just north. They are like a person not corrupted, as a sea innocently lapping onto a shore at a new dawn. You could walk and pause here or there, and leave ambition and cleverness behind, yes leave it with the other thousands of souls. You could pass and opt out of their game, and just be by the late summer tree. Just explore what it’s like beyond the towns.
Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet and photographer residing in the Southern Ontario area.