Real Life Soldiers

Haiku My Heart

December 14, 2012

On Friday, we Remember Our Hearts and write poetic verse in Haiku. Many of relate to others in our once per week community of friends and show up with stories, photos, art and feelings and share with each other. The exercize is called Haiku My Heart and can be shared and viewed at Rebecca's recuerda mi corazon

Trees at attention

Soldiers obeying orders

Guarding scenic view

“The camera never does it justice”, one of us would say as the other snaps photograph after photograph of a place we wandered to during our travels. My iPhoto is full of scenery pictures from scenic views, like this one, from all over the United States. 

We take the scenic drive. Stop the car where we deem a safe place to park. Then the dance begins:

"I'll grab some water, you got the camera?" she'll say.

"Yep, I got it. Wait a minute, I'll need my glasses. Where did I put them?" I'll answer.

"Last time I saw them they were in that side pouch on the door." she'd suggest.

"Oh, that's right." Then I'd dig through two glass cases, a pair of sunglasses, a candy wrapper, a lid from a carry-out Americano and a couple of pair of readers, one with the broken bow that is useless but never gets thrown away.

The above photo, by the way, is at an overlook on the drive to the top of Mt. Lemmon near Tucson, AZ. We made the trek as an outing during our recent trip. As I write this, we are near Kansas City and on our way to the Chicago suburbs to visit friends and family until we return home by Monday.

Photos like these always makes me think of a slide show of vacation photos that a friend wants me to see. They would show up at the coffee shop with the dreaded envelope bulging full of photographs, or if I were to go to their home to visit, the slides would come out and with the room lights darkened, I’d view life through their eyes one frame at a time.

These days, all the pictures I take are loaded onto the computer. As I’m traveling now, I load them from the camera onto the iPhoto on my MacBook Air. When I get home, I’ll share them onto the big desktop. Hopefully, I can show the Grandkids where we’ve been. At least they will look at the photos as they are wonderfully trained at obedience and politeness.

So now I show just one of them to you, and write to catch your interest. Sorry, nothing of note except a beautiful place atop the Sacred Earth Mother overlooking more mountain tops and valleys that seem to have these tree soldiers standing guard.

They look tired and in disarray. Almost like they are at attention but slumping from their battle fatigue. Energy spent. Battle will ensue soon and they know it, but they will stand and protect until the death. Were they lucky to pull such a duty station, high atop the world? Or would they have been better off down below along the empty stream?

You don’t need my photograph to see these guardians protecting the soil. Sometimes they are not so tall and weathered. Crawl down on your hands and knees and look at the blades of grass on the plains, or small pieces of plant growth amongst the rocks and sand of the desert. They stand there too. On guard. Protecting.

Peace