The Breaking of Rules

It is not my best trait, finding the cracks in the fence
and climbing through them.
There are reasons for fences after all,
for locks on the door and walls.
I know this, having built a few of them myself.
But still, when I see that bit of broken openess,
I see to see it as some odd mix of challange and opportunity
and before long I find myself in forbidden territory,
taking pictures and making maps and stories up in my head,
an archeologist of sorts, delighting in the breaking of rules
in the name of seeing.

About this poem.

About breaking into old buildings to take pictures and capture what is left. A bad but wonderful habit I have. About poking into people’s lives like a voyeur and learning the parts of them so often cut off from the rest of the world. It’s part of what I get to do in my work and it always feels like an honor. I have never been good at rules, as I told my therapist earlier this morning. Poetry is never about one thing.

The picture is taken on the outskirts of an abandoned Air Force base that yes, I wandered through on a foggy summer’s morning. This is where I got in.

Tom