If you follow this blog, you’ve seen the first part of this post, when it was shared on May 14. The second part is now revealed, a few weeks later than promised. (It’s been a busy spring here at Glover Gardens.)
Part 1
I saw this picture a few nights ago on a friend’s Instagram account, and then dreamed about it. In my dream, I wrote various very simple haiku to accompany the photo. It is so lovely, and almost begs its viewer to create a story around the female figure walking away from the camera.
What do you think when you look at the photo?
Perhaps she is simply on a stroll, daydreaming.
she strolls peacefully
framed by the oak canopy
dreaming her future
Or is she walking away from something?
having decided,
she slowly left her old life
never looking back
Maybe she is walking toward something, or someone.
joyful beats her heart
this journey just beginning
there will be no end
What do you think? I will reveal the real story and the location in a day or two. (Update: of course, now we know that my “day or two” was actually three weeks…did I say it has been a little busy around here?)
Intermission
The Glover Gardens Cookbook Facebook page link to this post collected a couple of comments I wanted to share.
I vote joyful and walking toward something.
I think she’s had it! She is walking away to live the life and be the person she once was, before she got sucked into her horrible present life of hell.
(I’m pretty sure the second one was irony.)
Part 2
The real story is … none of the above. The photo was snapped during a mother-daughter outing as part of our recent visit to New Orleans (the figure in the photo is the mom). A group of us from Southeast Texas met in the Crescent City last month to soak up the culture and music of Jazz Fest, and two of our crowd peeled off to visit Oak Alley Plantation one day. My friend and her grownup daughter had a lovely time touring the property, and this photo captured under the 300-year old alley of oaks was simply serendipity. When I asked for permission to use the picture along with the haiku musings it inspired, I also wanted to know how it came about; the daughter (a lovely woman in her early 20s who is also my friend) said:
I made her walk in front of me so I could snap a pic… perhaps it’s half posed / half natural. I think the dress she was wearing happened to catch the breeze just right, making it perfectly airy!
So here’s one more haiku, to close out this train of thought.
Resources
- Nice post from another blogger about the history of Oak Alley
- Jazz Fest Anticipation stories
- Glover Gardens Cookbook Facebook page (please “like” it if you visit)
- A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words, or Several Haiku (the original post)
Copyright 2017, Glover Gardens Cookbook
