Camera in hand, I go to the Standing Bear Pow Wow with plans to enjoy the food, artwork, music and dancing. As always, I am inspired by artistry of all kinds, and I know poetry and photographs are waiting for me. The pow wow grounds are a place of ceremony, of love, of remembering the past and celebrating the present. A friend’s dad is back on the drums after having been ill. Other friends are dancing. My expectations are high and my camera is ready.

I like to be here alone. Alone in the crowd is a favorite feeling of mine when I want to think and write and shoot. Behind the crowd and to the side of the grandstand, I catch the dancers as they come by and the drummers when I see them as dancers pass. All this beauty cannot keep my attention from the beautiful ink to my left, and my camera gravitates to it, to her. I snap a few shots, noticing a young man who watches as I do so. Later, he moves to her side. I should’ve known they belonged together.

I’d rather not consider myself so much the interloper, but I am too intrigued to move on. So, between shots of dancers and drummers and kids playing behind the scenes, of greeting friends and community members who walk by, and of jotting notes on my phone, I continue to sneak shots of his couple. Then, they give me the prize, the inspiration for deeper thoughts, for poetry, for celebration.

 

See it? Two beautiful people, representing all that is today, all that is modern and chic. The cell phones come out, but it isn’t to read a friend’s text or post on Facebook or Twitter. Their action is to record the beauty of tradition, and there they are–inked arms and necks–awed by the ceremony and drawn to the people who are an active part of that ceremony.

I feel their longing to be part of what is before them, to come together in a unity that only centuries of tradition accomplish. They are to the dance, as I am to them–awed at a beauty that is only partially able to be described. The rest must be felt, internally and wholly…maybe even holy. There is something sacred in a place and time where all that is today meets with all that is tradition…and there is no collision, but rather respect and love and admiration.

I did take a moment to meet this young couple. I never have been any good at being sneaky, so I told on myself while asking permission to use the photographs for later writing. There is still a multitude of poetic reflections waiting to move from my mind and heart onto paper or into a computer.

I am thankful to Meg, and her great beauty, and to Joshua, and his pull to toward his family’s heritage, for providing me with this moment in time to reflect on the past and the present in a way that is whole and lovely–just as it should be.