Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
The Hat in the Sky
Al Zolynas
- After the war,
- after I was born,
- my father’s hobby
- (perhaps his obsession)
- was photography.
- New fathers often become
- photographers, it seems.
- But he took pictures of many things
- besides me,
- as if he suddenly felt it all
- slipping away
- and wanted to hold it forever.
- In one of the many shoe boxes
- full of photographs
- in my father’s house,
- one photo sticks in my mind,
- a snapshot
- of a black hat
- in midair,
- the kind of hat fashionable in the forties,
- a fedora — something
- Bogie would wear.
- Someone has thrown it
- into the air —
- perhaps my father himself,
- perhaps someone in an exuberant moment
- at a rally or gathering.
- It’s still there,
- hanging in the sky
- as ordinary and impossible
- as a painting by Magritte,
- and it’s impossible
- how it wrenches my heart, somehow.
- At odd moments in my life,
- that hat appears to me
- for no discernible reason.
Al Zolynas spent his boyhood in Australia before coming to the United States when he was 15. He taught literature and writing at Alliant International University (formerly USIU) for many years. An experienced Zen practitioner, he has recently begun teaching Zen meditation in Escondido and occasionally gives talks on Zen practice at Zen Center San Diego. “The Hat in the Sky” is from The New Physics, published by Wesleyan University Press. The entire book can be read online at capa.conncoll.edu/zolynas. The poem is published by permission. Photo credit: Arlie Zolynas.
Here's something you might be interested in.
The Hat in the Sky
The Hat in the Sky
Al Zolynas
- After the war,
- after I was born,
- my father’s hobby
- (perhaps his obsession)
- was photography.
- New fathers often become
- photographers, it seems.
- But he took pictures of many things
- besides me,
- as if he suddenly felt it all
- slipping away
- and wanted to hold it forever.
- In one of the many shoe boxes
- full of photographs
- in my father’s house,
- one photo sticks in my mind,
- a snapshot
- of a black hat
- in midair,
- the kind of hat fashionable in the forties,
- a fedora — something
- Bogie would wear.
- Someone has thrown it
- into the air —
- perhaps my father himself,
- perhaps someone in an exuberant moment
- at a rally or gathering.
- It’s still there,
- hanging in the sky
- as ordinary and impossible
- as a painting by Magritte,
- and it’s impossible
- how it wrenches my heart, somehow.
- At odd moments in my life,
- that hat appears to me
- for no discernible reason.
Al Zolynas spent his boyhood in Australia before coming to the United States when he was 15. He taught literature and writing at Alliant International University (formerly USIU) for many years. An experienced Zen practitioner, he has recently begun teaching Zen meditation in Escondido and occasionally gives talks on Zen practice at Zen Center San Diego. “The Hat in the Sky” is from The New Physics, published by Wesleyan University Press. The entire book can be read online at capa.conncoll.edu/zolynas. The poem is published by permission. Photo credit: Arlie Zolynas.
Comments