“Reflection” came quickly to me. I was coming up from our garage having just taken the dogs out and I noticed that the sun was coming through a small window in our foyer in a way I had not noticed before. 

My camera/phone in my pocket, I took a few pictures from various angles. We have a granite countertop there and the reflection of the window on the surface was so bright and clear, despite the granite being dark and speckled. 

I had the newspaper in my hand and I didn’t even bother to set it down, fearing that the moment would pass. So, I fumbled a bit to take the photo with only one hand. When I want to capture a shot that low to a surface I usually turn my phone upside down so that the lens is closer to the surface. 

I took a couple of shots and then realized that there was a gallon bucket sitting on the counter that I left there to remind me to water the plant that is also in the picture.

I pushed the bucket out of the way with the newspaper but it is still there on the right. You can just see the handle glinting.

I thought about using AI to take the bucket out, or cropping the photo more, but I don’t like using AI (for me, Photoshop) to strip things out of a photo. It isn’t that important to remove it and there is so much to be lost in that process. As for cropping the bucket out, I tried but couldn’t make it work for me. 

The burst of sunlight around the window in this photo really pops, especially in the black and white world of my photography. My photo editing is done almost entirely in Adobe Lightroom. I have created about twelve filters that I run each photo through, usually noticing something I like in at least one of them. If those don’t catch me, I go through LR’s basic b/w filters.

Once I find something that catches my eye I run through some basic levels–black, white, contrast, exposure, shadows–adjusting each one to see how they affect the image. Here, as I don’t trust my critical skill much regarding photos, I just turn my brain off and wait to see what looks best to me. 

This poem came from the photo, from the reflection on the granite affecting me in a surprising way, and the instant parallel I saw in physical versus mental reflections. 

Poems start in my mind, not on paper, and in this case I sifted through various first lines quickly and without too much thought, similar to how I adjust sliders for photos. I play with words, listening until something catches my ear. Then I put the words on paper before I forget them.

In this case these were my first lines:

A reflection glances
at all surfaces
and across some
lifts its tail to wag
and then marks

At that moment I was already thinking of casting reflection as a dog. Having just been outside with my own dogs, and having watched them so many times sniff a spot and pee on it, this isn’t a surprise to me. 

From there I played around with the idea of reflection being a dog, toying with other things that dogs do, how they react to us when we give them attention, how they behave when we are not paying attention.

This poem was always going to be short, mainly because I had a short window of time to write and I knew that I wanted to post a poem. In this case, having access to version history, I can see that it took me eight minutes to write the poem once I created a document, so probably ten minutes or so with sorting words in my head. 

Looking too closely at the creative process can be misleading, I think. This is how this poem came to be, but this isn’t how all of my poems are created. Much like looking closely at anything, when you zoom in you can lose perspective of the whole, the forest for the trees if you will. 

Two days later I can say I am smitten with this one, especially the combination of the poem and the image. They complement each other at a very obvious level, perhaps too obvious, but also they can be taken in quickly and each offers the chance for a bit more in-depth study if the reader has time to pause for …

Well, I won’t say it. Even putting three dots down there seems obnoxious. Vacillating crudities indeed.