Nature

Flower Power

Flower Power

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.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Daffodils

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.

To Meditate is No Disgrace


To Meditate is No Disgrace
The Water Tower
16

There comes a time when you can do no more.
You need to take a break, to step aside and wait
for the tide to turn and energy to flow.

The hard yards may be behind you,
but there’s hard yards waiting round the bend,
waiting for the break to end.

And you, you might bend and take a break,
but you must never break.

No one else can see what you see
or do what you do.
Nobody can take your place.
To take a break
and meditate is no disgrace.

Click here for Roger’s Reading on Anchor.
To Meditate is no Disgrace

Another Long Day

Another Long Day
The Water Tower
13

“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.”

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Another Long Day

Fight the Good Fight!

Fight the Good Fight
The Water Tower
12

“I fought the weather all day.
Relentless winds. Overpowering gusts
threatening to topple the tower,
to throw me off the ladder.

Very challenging, the painting.
An understatement like the undertow
when the tide threatens to take us out to sea.

I was treading water in the middle of the ocean,
 huge waves under my armpits, lifting me up,
dragging me down, and me quite powerless.

The strain, both mental and physical of biking
up a long steep hill, into a driving wind.
It felt like Sisyphus pushing his rock.”

Click here for Roger’s Reading on Anchor.
Fight the Good Fight

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 10

The Water Tower
10

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.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower 10

The Water Tower
St. Andrews
New Brunswick

Geoff Slater
Illustrations

Roger Moore
Poems

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

May Day

May Day

Mayday, Mayday, S O S,
this is a plea for help, I guess.

Dit-dit-dit- dat-dat-dat,
the world lies dying
and that’s a fact.

Add another dit-dit-dit
and that’s morse code
for we’re in deep shit.
What can we do
to get out of it?

Very little, as I see it,
if the world can’t be
bothered to see it.

Another half country
of forest gone,
right whales diminishing,
they won’t last long.
Rivers flooding,
forests on fire,
what have we done
to earn Gaia’s ire?

Human beings
long-forgotten,
but profits are up,
maybe that’s what’s rotten.
We’re near rock bottom
I would guess.
Mayday, Mayday, SOS,

We’ll soon be gone
our works forgotten.
No more humans,
the world in a mess:
Mayday, Mayday, SOS.


Comment: Well that’s how I see it some days and this is just one of those mournings. Say it in paint, say it in rhyme. Nobody’s listening most of the time.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
May Day

Dawn Chorus

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.

Click here for Roger’s reading.
Dawn Chorus

Doors

Vis Brevis – Ars longa

Doors
Revised version

Paintings:
doors you can walk through,
windows that open onto visions
of another, more beautiful life.
Deeper than the paint, the thoughts
and words that formed them,
brushed them into life,
an ephemeral life, so brief
that butterflies seem to last longer
and flowers live for all eternity.

Transience and insubstantiality.
Change is all around us,
we are surrounded by change.
But the deepest changes,
the ones that affect us most
are internal, set deep within us,
death’s eggs hatching slowly
since the day we were born.

Life is indeed short, and art endures.
Carved five thousand years ago,
in stone, this magnificent henge,
first Wood-henge, then Stonehenge,
majestic at the dawn of time,
with its sarsen stones, pillars, post-holes,
and labyrinths, circling within circles,
a frail spider-web of sunlit brilliance.

Lost now, the message,
as my own message is lost,
covered by paint, though words
emerge in the strangest places,
allowing us to peer in through windows
as long-lost words and worlds
whirl out through carved and painted
windows and everlasting doors.

Doors
First version

Paintings are doors you can walk through,
windows that open onto visions
of another, sometimes better, life.
Deeper than the paint are the thoughts
and words that formed them,
brushed them into life,
an ephemeral life, so brief
that butterflies last longer
and flowers live for all eternity,
or so it seems.

Transience and insubstantiality.
Change is all around us,
we are surrounded by change.
But the deepest changes,
the ones that affect us most
are internal, set deep within us,
death’s eggs hatching slowly
since the day we were born.

Life is indeed short, and art endures.
Carved five thousand years ago,
in stone, this Towie ball
with its labyrinths and circles.
Lost now, the message,
as my own message is lost,
covered by paint, though words
emerge in the strangest places,
allowing us to peer in through windows
as long lost words and worlds
walk out through carved and painted doors.

Click on this link for Roger’s reading.
Doors