We Got Game!

As folks who visit my blog regularly know, I have a friend who is a Shaman. She would correct me to say that she's an Assistant Shaman or a Shaman in Training or some such Lesser Shaman (maybe like the Least Flycatcher: every bit as wonderful as, say, the Acadian Flycatcher, but just living a bit farther north).

Every day, Shaman emails three or four new poems to her friends. My husband, being her occasional racketball partner, was on the receiving list, and so it was that I happened to read a couple of them. I was hooked. There, in beautiful words, were many of the same things I was photographing. I emailed her a photo that paired wonderfully with one of her poems and asked to be put on her mailing list. That was the start of it.

After a few weeks, I put up a blog called Shaman and Wizard and began publishing her poems and adding photos to illustrate some of them. For a while we kept it quiet and private, although I was secretly eager for the world to see our creations. Eventually she agreed to share.

Often a poem sends me out in search of the right picture; sometimes I'll send her a photo and wait for the almost inevitable poetic response. Sometimes things just get plain funny, as in the following exchange. It started when I posted this photo of one of Shaman's concrete statues (among other things, she's a sculptor). For me, it was a good exercise in learning some photo editing tricks.
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...................................Becky Atop Whiteface at Sunset

Whiteface Mountain is near Lake Placid. There is a road that winds up to its summit (which is rocky and bare and commands a magnificent view of that part of the Adirondacks), so most people around here are familiar with it.

I didn't have to wait too long... a couple of days after posting that photo on the Sha-Wiz site, this poem arrived in my Inbox:

Whiteface Naked

I didn’t climb naked
I really didn’t,
it was the hot sun,
the dizzying heights,
distant views,
my then love near,
yes, I took off my clothes,
the picture sold
by him
to some blog for little
money and all
my dignity.
But I do not regret
the moment
when the sun and her colors
stroked
me
as he never could.

By Becky Harblin May 27, 2007

It struck me so funny that I just had to share it with you. I hope you'll check out some of her other writing on the Shaman and Wizard site. You'll find a few of my photographs there too.