Is it a silken purse made from the pig’s ear of its seed pod, or just a single seed excreted by an incontinent bird?
Its bruised evening-sky hues stretch their emperor’s imperial purple all too thin. In the late summer sun it swallows one errant bee in its leviathan mouth.
Sole survivor, from a score of flowers that once climbed the seven foot, eight foot stalk to sway in the wind, it stands on guard against fall cold and winter’s snow.
Comment: I didn’t like the ending to the earlier version, so, when it came to reading it, I rewrote it first instead. I much prefer this version. Apologies to those who read the earlier words.
Words grow like flowers, invasive, cruel, beautiful, cutting, and when cut, they wither and fade, just like flowers. Catch them while you can, I say. Catch them, hold them tight, press them to you heart, for time is voracious and will soon devour them, swallowing them down in the black holes of forgetfulness, carelessness, and memory loss. Shine a light on your words. Underline them, grace them with stars, think about them, carefully. And remember, the word once spoken or written can never, ever be recalled.
Joy of Light
I wait for words to descend, soft, peaceful. They brush my mind with the soft touch of a grey jay’s wings. When they refuse to come, I know that silence is golden. Sunshine spreads its early morning light, upwards, under the blinds, into my room and my eyelashes radiate its rainbow.
Light from the rose window in Chartres once spread its spectrum over my hands, and I rejoiced in the glory of its speckled glow. I spread my fingers before my face and marveled at the suit of lights clothing my body. In such splendour mortal things like words cease to flow.
Words are inadequate. They cannot express what I feel when I breathe in color and light and my heart expands into an everlasting rose, as red as dawn, as bright as a blushing sunrise over Minister’s Island. Flowers burst into bloom. A sense of immanent beauty fills me as light, and warmth, and joy disperse night’s gloom.
Finley has decided, quite rightly, that what she wants to paint, draw, or colour, is much more important than any of the page prompts in the drawing book I got her. That said, this could easily be a comic book cover – or the cover photo of my next book.
“I want to see the world again through the eyes of a little child” – Picasso. The gift of so doing is precious.
The hollyhocks are back. A little bit late, but just starting to reveal themselves in all their glory. It’s been a strange spring, with frost warnings (and two actual frosts) in June, heavy rain, T-Storms, a tornado watch, extra hot days and, thankfully cold nights with the temperatures at +4C, even this month, July.
The yucca plant is flowering again, with three flourishing stems this time. It only started to flower late last week, but it, too, is full of promise. Somehow, while there are flowers, there is still some hope, some beauty, and some time and space for rejoicing.
Ah, daffodils, my favourite flowers.
Daffodils
Winter’s chill lingers well into spring. I buy daffodils to encourage the sun to return and shine in the kitchen. Tight-clenched fists their buds, they sit on the table and I wait for them to open.
For ten long days the daffodils endured, bringing to vase and breakfast- table stored up sunshine and the silky softness of their golden gift.
Their scent grew stronger as they gathered strength from the sugar we placed in their water, but now they have withered and their day is done.
Dry and shriveled they stand paper- thin and brown, crisp to the touch. They hang their heads as their time runs out and death weighs them down.
Vis brevis, ars longa – life is short but art endures. Maybe my daffodils will last longer than the yucca and the hollyhocks. They will certainly outlive this year’s bloom. Time and tide wait for no man, and flowers too are subject to the waxing and the waning of the moon. That’s life, I guess. Long may it last.
On the seventh day he would have rested, but there’s no rest for the restless artists who create in thought, word, and deed.
They can rest from the deed and take a day off work, but thought and word go on.
And even if their day is silent, with no one to talk to, no words at all, the everlasting bunnies of thought dance on and on, beating their drums, planning, sketching, designing, outlining, shuffling the cards, mixing colors and words in endless games of creativity.
“Another long day but I completed the sky, then finished the wharf’s grey asphalt. Large areas are easier to spray with my air gun. It’s hard to paint them with a brush.
I also got the base coat on to the ever-greens. Much more difficult: I painted the inside of the cage around the ladder that leads to the roof. Fiddly work, time consuming, but nice to get out of the way.
No painting tomorrow, but Saturday and Sunday look good. As for Monday, I don’t know yet I’ll have to wait and see if it rains.”
In the beginning the artist decided to start with the sky and work his way downwards.
He chose and mixed his paints. Then he climbed to the tower’s top and began to paint.
“Let there be sky,” the artist said. He masked his face, pressed the button, and refreshed the sky’s battered surface turning it to a delicate shade of blue.
The morning and the afternoon took up that day. When evening came, he packed up his equipment and went home to rest.
How do you paint this water tower, that garden, these flowers, those woods? Up and down: two dimensions. Easy. Where does light begin and darkness end?
Where do these things come from – depth tactility, energy, water’s flow, that rush of breathless movement that transcends the painting’s stillness?
This water tower is more than a reservoir. Restored, it reaches out, an old friend, with all its strengths that reinforce the needs, physical and spiritual, of so many people.
The water tower itself is more than a tower: it symbolizes the creative power of life and art.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor. The Water Tower 9
Lifted up, so close to the stars, and even though we cannot see them we know they are there, looking down as we labour here below.
Are they sentient? Do they smile on us, or frown? Is our fate really up there, written in their ranks? Or is it in our own hands to raise ourselves up from the mud, to sail this frail bone-boat, to make something out of nothing?
Fate? Destiny? The windmill’s sails throwing us back down, into the mud, or lifting us up to the stars? Which is it to be? Such questions are too deep for you and me.
Your work is in your paint, mine in my words, yet paintbrush and pen are guided, both, by the hand that holds the artist’s hand.
rogermoorepoet 