The Space Between

“The meaning appears in the space between the images, in the mood they raise in the beholder.”
Minor White 1952

I let the children guide me
for it is their “space between” that
I long not to capture
but illuminate.

This is
the void we adults try to fill,
the place where children are
most at home.

Here sun and shadow
kiss our cheeks
like mothers saying
goodnight.

Flowers open their lips
and speak of
love.

The children have no fear but
only trust, boundless trust,
in the mystery they
know so well.

Only when I close my eyes
can I see what they see,
but to photograph with
eyes closed is foolhardy.

It is the fool I must
become.

Patricia Lay-Dorsey
summer 2010


"The Space Between" photo project can be seen on my website. Just go to http://www.patricialaydorsey.com and click on "The Space Between" under portfolios. It is a work-in-progress so you might want to check back every so often.

I've been working on this project all summer. I say "working" but it's really been more like playing. Seeing summer through the eyes of children has awakened memories of popping hot tar bubbles with my bare feet, sticking my arm down into the chilled ice water of the old soda pop machine at Carr's General Store, the smell of dried seaweed and jellyfish on the beach where we rented our summer cottage, family dinners around the round wooden table on the front screened porch. Oh, so many memories of those months that were endless, timeless. The children have helped me slow down and savor every minute of this long hot summer.

How grateful I am to them, and to their parents who signed model release forms and trusted me to show their children in respectful ways. I hope the end result pleases them.

And I have a dear poet friend, Dorothy Walters, to thank for helping to revise the poem into its present form. As they say, it takes a village...