Seeing imogenc's wonderful image made me want to upload this old poem of mine. It's not the best "story" for her image, but nevertheless...

Here's the poem:

Elaine Elizabeth Belz

INTERVIEW AT THE CAFE-BAR

She breaks off mid-sentence,
fingers tightening their grip around
the handle of her coffee cup,
the long dead air an ideal backdrop
for dancing steam,
a careless waif that haunts
the familiar feel of this recurring dream.

Her fingers stroke the outside of the cup—
now nearly empty—and she stares,
eyes fondly wrapped around some distant space,
savoring an absence that still lingers:
its warm presence curling up
toward the light—escaping steam—
a question mark
to punctuate this fragment of eternity.
She clears her throat,

and words disperse the silence.

...in Grand Ledge

We're not going in chronological order here. This is a thick cloud cover over Michigan (11/2/12).

En route from DTW to SFO, from home (Detroit) back home (Oakland), this shot was somewhere over Utah or Nevada. There's frost on the window.

I've always loved the tiles on the wall in the ladies' room at the Traffic Jam and Snug restaurant (known locally as TJ's) in Detroit. I wonder if they're Pewabic tiles?

http://www.pewabic.org/ for those who are interested...

The sky was so beautiful, with moonlit clouds near the horizon and bright stars overhead. Too bad I couldn't seem to capture it. So instead I manipulated the resulting photo a bit, and hope this could be an interesting texture for something.