What It Says

what it says (the letter the poem the look)

gold (the ink the rhyme the edge of the book)

how the hand (holds it touches it forgets after a while)

why the sender (wanted longed for smiled did not smile)

then the painter (with paper with brush)

and still that letter (a swirl a hush)

and the other letter (all that way just for this)

and the moment (a serif a stamp a miss)

***

What does it mean? Yes.
May 2019 reveal the meanings you seek.

There's So Much There There...

Another end-of-the-year walk along a path that is familiar in spring and summer (familiar, though always surprising), but which is now silent (no red-winged blackbirds calling from the cattails and treetops) until the sun touches the tops of distant trees and the Canada geese decide to honk themselves up into the sky to meet the warmth. Open water is becoming scarce; a thin layer of ice crinkles the surface of the pond. The orioles' nest is gone; with no ongoing maintenance, one of these windstorms brought it down.

I play the "there" game as I walk: There's where I saw the migrating palm warbler. There's where the snapping turtle crossed the impoundment. There's where I watched a dragonfly emerge from its larval skin. There's where the watersnake likes to sun on early summer mornings. There's the spot on the trail where a patch of sunlight might attract ebony jewelwings.

And on and on. It is a luxury to have a "there" place, a place one knows so well one could write a place-ography of it. There is loss, too—a favorite tree (or several) taken by a hurricane, a favorite view destroyed by new power lines. But I keep returning. I keep expanding the "there" list.

In this season of solstice, remember: Light is returning, slowly but surely, as this old world makes its way around that old star. Keep adding to your "there" list. Onward we go.

Poem in Blue and Gold

I last walked this path when the dogwood was in bloom. May. And now it's December; a thin layer of ice has formed around the edges of the lake, beneath the dogwoods that overhang the water to soak in all the extra light in spring.

Spring and almost-winter. A single path connects the two, leads forth from each, circles back. Just one line in the visual poem of the woods, a poem that is revised with each storm. Legions of trees—old oaks, mostly, have fallen. Small piles of fresh sawdust on the edge of the path still mark the most recent blowdowns. Many of the still-upright trees are shredded by pileated woodpeckers; some of these trees will not survive the next storm.

It can be too much metaphor, so I try to walk without thinking figuratively. The bald eagle looking for a perch above open water; the three swans slow to awaken on a cold morning; the kingfisher with its clicking call; an occasional songbird determined to overwinter here—I try to see and I try to name what is. But each oak leaf beneath my feet (whose parent tree may or may not still be standing) brings me back to the metaphor of the path. And not comparing, but superimposing the images of time, almost-winter and spring.

how we know
the names of what will be—
poem in blue and gold

A Distant River, A Hook

John, if you're reading this, this is for you. 💕

There is nothing more noble, more brave, more poignantly human than to strive to bring order to the chaos of existence. This is what artists do. "Order" may be fourteen lines long, as in a sonnet; six inches square or 11' x 3' on a piece of paper or cardboard; musical notes that wait for knowing hands to pluck the strings in a certain way...

...or that order might be words set free into a dimly-lit room, over the refuse of dinner, between friends. A river of words, punctuated by laughter and immediate revision and twinkling eyes.

Interwoven stories of people real and imagined (and both) hiding, emerging from hiding, seeking freedom, free...

Stories of where we are from and what we have endured and where we are going. Stories wherein we laugh at the "what we have endured" part, although the laughter is bittersweet, and we wonder if the endurance was worth it, was it enough, did we really endure or did we hide behind the appearance of having endured.

Does a fish in a tank know it is in a tank? Does a fish in a river know it is in a river?

Do we?

Process

Just two months short of two years that I've been experimenting with collage as a portal to poetry, or as a companion to poetry, or as inspiration for poetry...Obviously, the experiment continues, if I don't even know how to characterize the experiment itself.

Today, then, the process described in ekphrastic haiku...

*

rice paper
finding true love in what
he leaves behind

*

watercolors
learning each time
what the brush can hold

*

gold paint
if you know how to see it
light

*

how little we know
torn scraps
of one another's lives