Gardens

A Good Day’s Work

A Good Day’s Work
The Water Tower
11

 “A good day’s work,” the artist said,
admiring, as light drained from the sky,
 all the different blues of a lower sky renewed.

Above the tower, a deeper shade of blue.
At the tower’s foot, the nascent grass grew damp
with dew beneath the artist’s feet.

And so, to home, but not to rest.
The restless mind plans on and on,
the next day’s work, and after that, the next.

We who bear witness, our feet fixed in the earth below,
cherish each moment, admire the paints as they flow.
Time and space trapped in fragile things
and the water tower, a watch tower now,
standing guard, on high, watching over, mirroring,
all poor creatures, set on earth, and born to die.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
A Good Day’s Work

The Water Tower 9

The Water Tower
9

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

The Water Tower 8

The Water Tower
8

Circles within circles and wheels within wheels,
the restless gears always churning,
we both know how it feels.

Some call it a gift, some call it a calling,
but we who follow the creative way
rarely know the how and why
of who pushes whom with what,
nor when, nor where, yet still we try
to scale that ladder, to reach that sky,
and always will, until we shrivel,
give up the creative ghost, and die.

Even the water tower frowns
when I write ‘die’. Yet death will take us all.
Tombs and tombstones will crumble and fall.
Monuments, their words carved in stone,
will fall sideways, perish, and die,
their words erased by the sandpaper polish
of wind, snow, hailstones, sun, and time.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower 8

The Water Tower 7

The Water Tower 7

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.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower 7

Geoff Slater – Painter

Roger Moore – Poet

The Water Tower 6

The Water Tower 6

What launch pad lifts us to our fate?
What makes us climb above the beach,
above the gardens, above the trees?
Why are we striving for that pot of gold
that always seems out of reach?

Why is what we have achieved never enough?
Why must our eyes be fixed on stars beyond the stars
when lesser, earthbound men are bound by lowly wars?

Are we giants then, to aspire not to be
like other men, clad in grey suits
and suitable shirts and ties.
Working from nine to five,
five days a week, and sometimes six.
Fixed hours, yet our hours are ours and never fixed.

Ambition, for us, the coming word,
the oncoming stroke of paint,
the incomplete picture, much better
than the ones we have done of late.
No artistic battle is ever won
when we sit back and say
and now my creative work is done.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower 6

Geoff Slater – Painter

Roger Moore – Poet

The Water Tower 5

The Water Tower 5

Does the left hand know
what the right hand is doing?

Does the pencil know
where the artist’s hand is going?

Does the artist know
the point of arrival
before he even sets out
and takes his first step
on that life-long journey?

Or does he play the music by ear,
the paint by eye,
the pencil and brush
by the deftest of touches
that follow a path set
long ago in the summer stars
and the winter nights
of longing and strife?

Only the artist knows:
and he might not be telling.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Water Tower 5

Geoff Slater – Painter

Roger Moore – Poet

The Water Tower 4



The Water Tower 4

The artist scales Jacob’s ladder,
per ardua ad astra,
through hardship to the stars.

He discovers a jigsaw puzzle
of shattered color and shape,
a serpent’s shed skin of paint,
battered patterns broken, stripped,
dangling, swayed by the wind
that washes and renews the world.

What world you ask?
The painter’s world. The world that dwells
within the meditating mind.
The creation that awaits the artist’s touch
in order to come alive and beckon us.
The secret, sacred world
of the artist’s hidden garden,
soon to be revealed.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower 4

Geoff Slater – Painter

Roger Moore – Poet

The Water Tower

The Water Tower

I took the e-file to Covey’s, the Printer on Prospect Street, Fredericton, on Monday. On Tuesday, Jared set up the files for printing, and I received the book on Thursday morning – nice and early. What an incredible turn around. The writing time-frame is interesting too. Geoff painted and posted. I wrote. The whole thing came together in less than a month. It just shows what inspiration, collaboration, and hard work can do. Here is a poem (# 17) from the book.

17

This year’s snow is not last year’s snow.
Tell me, if you know,
where did last year’s snowfall go?

These flowers you paint,
they are not last year’s flowers.

Time flows and the world renews itself.
It may seem the same, but it’s not.
Nor are you the same. How could you be?

You too have renewed yourself,
grown, like these flowers you paint,
these flowers that will wither and perish
to lie buried beneath fresh snow.

You cannot walk in the same river twice.
Nor can you paint the same flower
once it has withered and gone.
The flowers you paint can never be
the ones you painted before.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower

Gloves

Gloves

“I work in a match factory.”
“Do you put the heads on?”
“No. I put the gloves on.
They’re boxing matches.”

A golden oldie, still vibrant,
from the Goon Show, BBC, 1950’s.

Your gloves are off now and they lie
on the table where you work.
How long have you had them?
Fifteen, twenty years?
Like good wine, carefully stored,
old friends are better with age.

A second chestnut from the Goon Show:
“Have you put the cat out?”
“No, dear. It wasn’t on fire.”

And that’s another good reason
why the water tower,
and its full renovation,
is so very, very important.

Bible and Water Tower,
hand in glove:
“And Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed
like any of these.”

Comment: A gorgeous photo, colors and textures, light and dark, from my friend, Geoff Slater, the line painter and muralist. He is working on restoring the mural on the water tower in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, Canada.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Gloves.

House of Dreams

House of Dreams

1

The clematis unfolds

bruised purple on the porch.

Jazz piano:

beneath the black

and white hammers

of ivory keys,

old wounds crack open.

A flight of feathered notes:

this dead heart

sacrificed on the lawn.

I wash fresh stains

from my fingers

with the garden hose.

2

The evening stretches out

a shadow hand.

I feel my heart

squeezed like an orange

by long, dark fingers.

Somewhere,

the whitethroat

trills its guillotine

of vertical notes.

I flap my hands in the air.

They float there,

white butterflies,

amputated

in sunlight’s

net.

3

The light fails

fast, I hold up

shorn stumps

of flowers

for the night

wind to heal.

The pale magnolia

bleeds into summer:

white petals

melting on the lawn

like snow.

Sparrow sings

an afterlife

built of spring

branches.

4

Pressed between

the pages of my dream:

a lingering scent;

the death of last

year’s delphiniums;

the tall tree

toppled in the yard;

a crab apple flower;

a shard of grass

as brittle

as a bitter tongue

at winter’s

end.

5

A leaf lies down

in a broken

corner

and fills me

with a sudden silence.

I revise

our scrimshaw history

carving fresh tales

in the ivory

of new found bones.

6

A vixen

hunts for my heart.

She digs deep

at midnight

unearthing

the dry teeth

you buried

from my borrowed

head.

Click here to hear Roger read this poem on Anchor.
House of Dreams