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.
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.”
“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.
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
rogermoorepoet 