One of the places I enjoy walking is located at the Veterans Administration in Leavenworth. A building located near Lake Jeanette has been deteriorating a little more each year. I don't know whether the Veterans Administration plans on demolishing the building at some point. The overgrown vegetation has at least been removed recently.
Every year around Labor Day, I make a point of visiting the sunflower field at Grinter Farms, which is located between Tonganoxie and Lawrence off of highway 24. This year I got something like 150 pictures in about thirty or forty-five minutes. One of the photographers that morning had been there for three hours and even took pictures with a drone.
I should have returned to this field when the heads matured. The flowers had only recently opened up in the pictures appearing below.
One my poems about visiting a sunflower field will be published soon.
I have slowly started to take more pictures. My fall last October when I was taking pictures, stepped wrong on a hillside, and ended up making a complete flip backwards while still holding my camera made me reluctant to take many other excursions with my camera. My camera, fortunately, survived the fall.
The fourth picture here is one of my favorites. It currently serves as the wallpaper on my computer. Clicking on each picture here will make it larger.
Listening for Low Tide, my chapbook, has been awarded an honorable mention in the poetry chapbook category by the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award.
I'm pleasantly surprised and very happy at seeing the recognition given to my poems.
The commentary on my chapbook reads,
"Listening for Low Tide, James P. Cooper, Choeofpleirn Press
- In these metaphysical yet modern poems, the boundaries between dreaming and
waking blur, and so do the borders incurred on maps and within human existence.
These verses remind readers about the value of solitude and silence in this
ever busy and confusing world. This collection asks for a moment to "hear
/ the wintering geese before eight / of them glide onto the far shore."
Place is deeply important, presenting deep reflections about cities, roadsides,
rural spaces, and personal ranges that gently evoke remembrance of how even the
darkest train track can shape a person's life."
