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.
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.
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
“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.
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
Joy
Such joy in small things:
a task finished,
the old month ended,
a new month begun.
Such joy in the acorn:
a thought planted in the mind
and gradually growing,
root, trunk, and branch.
Such joy in those first green shoots
thrusting up from dead-leaf mold
to renew themselves, reborn –
as this year’s hollyhocks.
Such joy in the surge of spring birds:
robins marching on the lawn,
passerines and song birds returning,
ducks and geese at ice’s edge.
Such joy to reach out,
to stand beneath leafing boughs,
to watch beauty’s youthful feet
how they can dance to cheer ageing eyes.
Mallards
They flew twice around the house, then settled in on the snow. Not a pond in sight. Six of them: beautiful. The snow was fairly fresh and they sort of swam through it, looking very clumsy. Between low light, fly screens, and dirty winter windows, the photos aren’t great. But what fun. This is the best way to shoot things: with a camera.
Dawn Chorus
On a sunny morning, the sun lights up
my bedroom wall. Each day he arrives
earlier and earlier, a minute a day.
Now days grow longer, a sure sign
that spring is on its way.
As I lie awake, waiting for the sun,
I sing my morning sunshine song.
It keeps me warm and comforts me.
I also count the birds that fly across
the garden in search of sunshine and food.
Crows come first. They perch atop
the highest trees and watch and wait.
Mourning Doves come next
and their dawn song is a mourning chorus,
“Who-who-who’s next?
called from branch to branch.
With the sun come Chickadees,
Pine Siskins, lazy Blue Jays, Juncos.
These are all regulars.
Irregular are my neighbor’s Cardinals,
orange and red, American Goldfinches,
two small woodpeckers, a Downie
and a Hairy, a Nuthatch.
Gone now are the Gray Jays,
Gorbies, Whisky Jacks,
those ghosts of the woods.
Lost too are the Greater Pileated,
the flocks of Grosbeaks, Evening,
Pine, and Rose-Breasted.
They may come back,
but somehow, I doubt it.
For now, the Blueness of Jays,
the Blackness of Crows,
and an unsubtle dawn chorus
of Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw.
Spiders
The spider plant
spins out web after web,
all knotted together,
then ejected
from the central nest.
One landed on my floor
the other afternoon
with an enormous clunk.
A huge new set of offspring
and roots ejected and sent
on a voyage of discovery
to find a new home.
Mala madre / bad mother.
Oaxacans have a curious way
of naming their plants.
I lived in an apartment
above a courtyard
filled with malas madres.
A Bird of Paradise
nested in the same tree,
while in the garden
a banana plant, in flower,
a huge hibiscus,
and such a variety
of prize poinsettias
that I could never get
the varieties straight:
red, white, cream, single,
clotted, and double-crowned.
In the powder room,
downstairs, our hibiscus
is about to break
into winter blooms.
Sider mites crawl all over it.
Every day, I hunt them down,
squishing them whenever I can.
My daughter calls me cruel
and a padre malo.
I say ‘no: it’s them
or the hibiscus.
You can’t have both.’
Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Spiders
Rain or Shine
Ginger Marcinkowski
(KIRA, August, 2019)
“My walk each morning, rain or shine,
feathers my black galoshes with dewy grass.
There I would ramble through gated doors
that kept out the world and sealed in
my pen’s work for that day.
I often found myself sidetracked,
exploring paths that led through flowerbeds,
and up to my favorite sculptures.
I paused to watch my fellow artists
as they focused on chosen subjects
unaware that I was eavesdropping.
Then silently, I would steal away
along the well-trod path to my studio,
pausing long enough to greet the llamas
and baby goats. If I listen carefully
I can still hear their bleating.
In wonder, every day, I climbed the steps
of wood that led to my studio, opened
the door, and turned to breathe in my good
fortune. ‘What a blessed woman you are,’
I would tell myself before taking my place
for hours on end at my desk, each moment,
each stroke of the pen, each letter added
to the growing lines on the page, a gift.”
Comment: This is a found poem, found in the sense that it doesn’t belong to me. I met Ginger at KIRA in August, 2019, and we became close friends. We have corresponded regularly since meeting and she has become one of the best beta readers I have ever had, open, fiercely, honest, knowledgeable, and challenging. This challenge for me ‘to be the best that I can be’ really does bring the best out of me as a writer.
A found poem: I found it in one of the e-mails Ginger sent. In it she described a typical day for her at Kingsbrae. Isolated from its e-mail prose, the lines shortened and the thoughts slightly re-arranged, it became this poem, Ginger’s poem, her poem. I offer it to her, as she offered her writing talents to me, openly and with great humility. It can be found in the section entitled Impressions of KIRA Artists on pages 66-67 of The Nature of Art and the Art of Nature (Cyberwit, 2021, details to follow when available).
Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Rain or Shine
rogermoorepoet 