Images from the Road

By Jeffry L’H. Tank

Images from the Road

I recently saw a collection of some wonderful photographs taken by a professional photographer I’ve met the last two years at a small motorcycle gathering at Seneca Rocks, WV. held each year by folks who ride old BMW’s. One set of photographs in particular really impressed me. They were from a collection of images of old abandoned houses in the West Virginia mountains called “Empty Spaces”. As I looked at the photographs I started wondering about the people who might have lived in those houses. I soon found myself writing a poem about one such family, called simply “The House”, as it was written from the perspective of the abandoned house remembering it’s former occupants. That got me to thinking about combining poems with images and photographs I’ve taken. Poems that addressed some aspect of the image or maybe a poem that speculated on what lay beyond the photographs field of view or hidden behind the surface of some structure or feature shown within the photograph, some impression the photograph brought to mind, directly or indirectly. Or perhaps the poem could simply tell a story based on the image, something completely made up, yet plausible, but again something inspired by the image itself. After writing the poem “The House” I starting looking over pictures I have taken during some of my rides and found several that seemed perfectly suited to being combined with a simple poem. So I thought I would include two of those here that relate to or have some other connection to motorcycling for this months article.

The first is a combination of a photograph I took last year on Skyline Drive on my way to Charlestown WV when I was trapped in a dense fog for several hours and a poem I have been trying to write about that time spent in that fog. What most impressed me about the ride was not only the sense of isolation but that at one point it seemed as if I was no longer traveling along the road surface, but rather that the section of road within my vision and I were moving as one through the void. When I finally emerged back into the daylight as the road descended from the cloud layer and the world was once more spread out below me, it was almost a revelation or reaffirmation of its existence, I could almost imagine that perhaps the world I now viewed had simply been a figment of my imagination during those hours lost in the fog. One of those experiences where one could question which is the more real, the monochrome world of the fog or the multi-colored world we normally accept as the more real one. Yet perhaps, both are equally real(?).

The accompanying poem is one that I have been struggling with for some time but until I decided to try to match it with an image it never seemed to quite come together. However once I decided to try to combine it with an image, it almost finished itself. Funny how inspiration can come from the most unlikely set of events.

The second offering is a combination of a picture I recently took while on my way home from Seneca Rocks and a poem I wrote based on what I saw as I re-examined it with this new perspective. That particular Sunday was one of those wonderful cool sunny summer days where all you want to do is just keep riding. Not being in a particular rush to return home I decided to head a bit south from Seneca Rocks to ride along Smoke Hole Rd., about 20 miles long end to end. The pass through Smoke Hole canyon was cut by one of the two forks of the south branch of the Potomac River in West Virginia and is one the deepest such cuts in the Mid-Atlantic area. The picture was taken at the top of North Fork Mountain at the highest point along Smoke Hole Rd. If you’ve never been down that way it’s worth the trip and is an easy day’s ride down and back. There is loads of information on Smoke Hole on the web about it’s formation, location, etc.

While the first is specifically about motorcycling, the second is only related by the fact that the photograph was taken during a motorcycle trip with the words being inspired by the image.

An Ethereal Passage

A fog shrouded existence
encased in a monochrome universe.
An ethereal globe of gray,
slipping forever forward, a tranquil passage
in a world beyond time.

Bound to a ribbon of blacktop
guided by the rhythm of a mountain landscape.
Apparitions from beyond the boundaries of my solitude
appear for a instant,
then escape into the haze.

Descending from the clouds,
the phantasmal visions of the past hours fade.
Images held within my memory are all that remain
of my surrealistic passage
through a dreamscape sky.

Sunlight and Shadows

Sunlight and Shadows
Vying for dominance
On a mountain meadow.

A shaded pool
Reflecting that which shades
Lying in a road going nowhere.

Crystal visions of blue
Hiding temporary tenants
That lie beneath it’s surface.

Contrasting colors
Painted on a tree
Reaching for the Heavens.

An image of a moment
Captured on grains of silver
And frozen forever in time.

© Jeffry L’H. Tank

Thanks for visiting VirginiaWind.

Travel | Back Seat | Byways | Specials | Letters | Tips | About Us | Privacy | Disclaimer | Search