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  • SITE / BIO
  • Visual Arts
    • Sculpture I / Wood
    • Sculpture II / Stone
    • Painting
    • Photocomposites
    • Prints I woodcuts / linocuts
    • Prints II etchings / aquatints
    • Prints III mezzotints
    • Stained Glass
    • Film [experimental]
    • Early Work [1980's]
  • Music
    • Music I / CD's
    • Music II / Videos
    • Music III / Compositions
    • MUSIC IV / NOTATED WORKS
      • GUITAR
      • NATIVE FLUTE
      • DUOS
    • Music V / Programs-Concerts
  • Books Published
    • POETRY
  • Contact / Links / Archive
    • Contact
    • Links
    • Archive

POETRY

IN MEMORIAM 2000

[to those who have passed]
​
Remnants
March / 2020

Any flower will do
It opens its delicate petals to the light, the warmth
It stands tall in the center of the chaos
That nature seems

The trees, stones, shrubs, and bony charred remnants Of fires past, mingle
Water, from inside the earth, falls
Moves, by gravity, down to the river far below

A snake, the river moves through the canyon
The curving flight of the Phoenix
A million years of time within an infinite expansion
A reflection of beauty, evolving in space


Metaphysics- back to the questions

Was I, before my birth, coming back to life
And away from death?

Is death oblivion?
Is it a metamorphosis?

Death is life
And life is death




Below
March / 2020

Near the top, along Angeles Crest
Before Chilao, at Charlton Flats
Below the tall pines, a walk

Before the snow

Past a small but fast stream
And Kathleen, with the wolf flute
Echoing in the air, fresh, haunting

Below, the Coronavirus creeps
Stalking everyone
Who comes within its path

Up here all is empty
And filled with life and death

The snow comes slowly, at an angle

Flakes
Frozen tears of light

Charred trees as a backdrop
The two of us, like characters in an Antonioni film

Could vanish
And walk into another light

Or be given the time To touch the rain
In the here
In the now




Rain
April / 2020

The bamboo, the Gingko, the oaks
Their green, a new shade
Wet and soaked
Drenched and smiling for it

That’s what rain does in April
Despite the Beast, the virus, the pain
And the deaths

Spring is springing
The rhythm is in the rain

Hidden roots, nourished
Seeds finding the light
Pass the threshold of Earth’s surface

The dead now depart

Invisible passages
From distant shores
Lead to the fields of Elysium

Beyond the River Styx
Afar
Plaintive melodies
Sound

Seven notes embedded
In the rain

For all who have left
Weave through the Milky Way
Pure light and sound

The rain whispers
Vida breve

And all is renewed



Owls 
April / 2020

The owls haunting language
At 3 AM
The hawk, midday
Swoops, takes a low flight

Through the trees

The heat dries the throat
Death sits by the gate
A blood red stone head
Waits for a pulse

And through the trees
Clouds form

Out through the window
A hummingbird sits on her nest
Ten years returning
The power of memory and genetics

Through the trees
The winds flow

The sculptures, stone and wood
From original seeds
Stand their ground

A pulse is ringing
A high pitched drone
Hovers into the night

So many remains have been cremated
So many lives erased

The river Styx cannot be crossed
Until crossed

The Elysian Fields seem light years away
For now



The Gathering Crows 
May / 2020

They sit high above
In the gnarly treetop
In the deadwood zone

The chatter is intense
Dark silhouettes at odd angles
Gliding to their destinations

Of the Corvidae family
They cluster together

Episodic remembrances, timely
Recollections, of moments past
Bring them to hover

Above the random violence and chaos
That men exhibit

With blackened capes, the women
Flee beneath the trees
Running to their destinations

The Human family
Scatters

Awaits
A coronavirus hell

As the sunset burns
Amazing colors
Blot out the sky

Above the clouds, they wait
Demented victims

In search of a lost horizon
On a journey, to find
The beginning

The gathering crows
Glide to their destinations
Land in a darkened oak

And perch



Trees, an epitaph 
June / 2020

Some easily outlast us
Oaks go for hundreds of years

They are so patient, strong
And quiet

We, so fragile

A minuscule virus
Can do us in

Trees give us so much

Shade, oxygen
Are enough

But also calm, beauty
Majesty, wonder

Trees

They come in such varieties
We do too

I wouldn’t mind being one

(Peneus once turned Daphne, his daughter
Into a Laurel tree, in order to escape Apollo’s advances)

The tree was later carved into a lute

Robinson Jeffers, the poet
Once said
That after death you could find him
Deep within the stones

You’ll find me
High up in a tree
​
A good place to be



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