This Cross We Bear

SERIES:  The Architecture of Grief And Redemption™

Photos © Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved

"DREAM. PLEASE EXCUSE OUR APPEARANCE..." ™ A Photo Essay

A Morning Walk

Toronto, Ontario 

Fall of 2016

Presentable.  Looks can deceive,

and yet we hasten to judge, "Get a job." 

The distance between a sidewalk 

and a park bench can be measured

by inches, dollars, or days. As a 

bystander, I remind myself that 

lives are created or destroyed 

by those metrics.

"Homeless 97% Blind

Veteran. Give what u 

Can Afford Please. 

Not For: 

Booze - 16 years without

Smokes - 38 years without 

Drugs - Never taken or tried."

I have the luxury to 

analyze this situation.

Within the juxtaposition of words and reality 

adjacency is sometimes a coincidence.

"DREAM.  PLEASE EXCUSE OUR APPEARANCE..."

Someone less fortunate than me offers 

a helping hand.  Shamefully, I cannot

say that this is a coincidence. 

I ask myself, "Who hasn't dreamt of being 

young and rich." 

I harbor that thought not with sarcasm, not 

as dark humor, but with a keen awareness of 

the irony in this scene.  

The word 'humility' comes to mind. Beneath

the surface, there lurks a sense of guilt.

Photos/Text ©Rick Burnett Baker

All Rights Reserved

Before, During, After A Storm

                           Click on image to enlarge and read:

Photo/Text © Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

(Un)Imagine

Click on image to enlarge:

Photo/Text ©Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved

Honor/Dignity

                                        Click image to enlarge: 

Photo/Text © Rick Burnett Baker
All Rights Reserved

On Kindness And Refuge

Text and Photo ©Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved 

Hope: Future And (Re)Birth

(re)birth 

again, after decades, my (un)reality

opens one door of many, my concubine 

of life’s necessities vanquished.

daylight peaks and wanes, darkness satiates, 

nourished and still;  it is the light of life, 

manifest within living silence. memory holds 

its germaneness in the ‘now’, becomes prophesy 

on linear moments beginning to end. those many ‘other’ 

doors remain closed. for now, how fortunate the future.

   

Poem/Photo ©Rick Burnett Baker 

All Rights Reserved 

(Photo taken in Livingston, Texas)