Poems

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 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

Starless Night

Starless Night

Night without moon, without stars.
Dark sand dropped filling my mouth.
I walked the lonely bed of a dried up river.
When I stumbled in my dream,
my feet left no marks on the sand.  

Colorless was my path
through shadow and shade
where a thousand figures of darkness
danced before me,
hollow their eyes,
their mouths black caverns.
No flesh decked their bones
and no night birds called.

Footless the earth worm
sighed a sibilant song.
Mindless he drew in a net
full of sorrows, silver fish
darkling losing their sparkle.

The dusky shawl of knitted dreams
wrapped itself around my shoulders
and I picked at knots of tangled memory
that bled like fresh wounds.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Starless Night

The Water Tower 3

Geoff Slater – Photos
Roger Moore – Poems

The Water Tower 3

Here there is no in media res.
We must begin at the beginning:
the inspection, the realization,
the determination to ensure
that all will be restored
and the Garden of Eden rebuilt,
here, where it stood before.

The feet that hold no defeat,
the hands that will reconstruct
the image growing within the artist’s mind,
the mind that will determine
how the brush will guide,
the bright paint slither.

But first the damage must be repaired,
the surface cleaned,
fresh straw in the manger
to signify a readiness for renewal,
rebirth, and the continuing cycle.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor,
The Water Tower 3

The Water Tower 2

Geoff Slater (Photos)
Roger Moore (Poems)

The Water Tower 2

Shall we begin at the beginning
at the water tower’s foot
where the itch of dried flaking skin
is unbearable?

The earth worm coiled around the tower
opens his mouth to devour his tail
and the movement of his scales
scours old paint in an effort to remove
all traces of the former painter’s footprints.

Oh, the defiance of wind, rain, snow, ice,
the hot summer sun, and the tower
sweating year after year,
erasing man’s efforts to control
time and space with created beauty.

But now is the time of endless renewal,
the sun’s return to renew
the infinite cycle of death and rebirth.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Water Tower 2

Oily-Garcks

Oily-Garcks

And the oily-garcks betrayed the earth.
They drilled it full of holes
until the planet looked like a circle
of Swiss bankers’ cheese floating in space.

Mining, fracking, exploitation, internal combustion,
everything combined to make rainfall rise,
rivers flood, wild winds blow, hurricanes hustle,
lightning strike, again and again,
until forests flared, skies grew dark with cinders,
and land was reduced to water, dust, and even more ash.

The oily-garcks read their bibles and in their pride
they built super-fortunes, super-structures, super-yachts,
modelling those super-yachts, two or three each,
on double or triple the dimensions of Noah’s Ark.

Then they loaded them. They invited, two by two,
their friends, physicians, doctors, opticians, surgeons,
specialists, generalists, nurses, masseurs and masseuses,
body guards, anybody, really, who would keep them alive.
Next came their wives, concubines, girl friends, partners,
and those they loaded, old and new, by the dozen.

Earth warmed and her ice caps melted.
The seven seas rose higher and higher until
there was only one cruel, grey, destructive sea.

The oily-garcks set sail in their arks beneath
dark skies and an even darker future.
They sailed for forty days, forty weeks,
forty months, and then for forty years.

Nothing.

Gaia, raped, mocked, tortured, and destroyed,
had neither given nor promised a rainbow covenant.
No let up in the rains and winds, no supply ships,
no neutral landing sites, no undrowned friends,
no friendly rainbow in the sky to promise peace.

The oily-garks had brought no living food.
Their fridges were stacked with frozen dishes,
caviar, lobster, tenderloins, great wines, fine liqueurs.
They didn’t even bring a dove, just helicopters
launched from helipads that took off, year after year,
in search of the land that had disappeared.
They searched and searched until their fuel ran out.
In all that time, what did they see? They saw the sea.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Oily-garks





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.