DDD/journal

Monday, August 16, 2021

Poem

Stone

I have one mala bead.
It is, depending on the season,
cold or warm in my palm, but
always the perfect shape and weight.

Tooled by the lakeshore's mantra
it ceded all its misdirection
and drew into this
baby-smooth, old and new,

wise, silent, comforting stone.
I keep it on the grey worn arm
of my porch chair
and when I pick it up

it pauses me,
allows me passage from the moment,
permission almost,
to gather my awareness around me

so that I notice
some remarkable common thing
that has been here all along
waiting for me, as patient as a stone.

April 14, 2020

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Poem

Veery by Jim DeVona / Ink / 5 x 7

Veery

Another gift since the start of July
has been listening to a veery in the morning
fluting in the sumac tangle
up behind the barn as I walk that rise.

I'm used to hearing that haunting
in the evening from the darkness crouching
along the creek, counter-pointed
by lightning bugs at that changing of the guard.

But in the morning the singing seems
less an ode to quiet countryside
and more a fanfare for me -
as though the kingdom belongs to us both.

7/21/20

My dear brother

Graphite / 22 x 30

Friday, July 24, 2020

Poems

Mornings

Another gift since the start of July

has been listening to a veery in the morning
fluting from the sumac-tangle up beyond the barn
as I walk that rise.

I am used to hearing that haunting
in the evening from the darkness
crouching along the creek; counterpointed
by lightning bugs at that changing of the guard,

but in the morning the singing seems
less an ode to quiet countryside
and more a fanfare for me -
as though the kingdom belongs to us both.

July 21

Being here

My criss-crossing paths
through the Summer goldenrod
are mown fairways eight-feet wide;
avenues for evening walks to the river,
but also boulevards for turkeys and deer
and, perhaps, shopping-aisles
for the young red-tail hawk
who has made my matrix his turf.

We watched him
perched and preening for forty-five minutes
atop the wind-lashed power pole
and we hear him each day
at every hour somewhere
among the encircling tree-tops
creeing from the crow patrols
or just squawking - adolescent as he is.

But to my point; my paths,
I realize, are ready-made enfilades
for his sweeping hungry eyes.
Creating them has prepared a table for him.
And so, like the wren and phoebe
who found me useful to trim and notch
the wild world for them to build a home,
this hawk, the new blood, might stay also
for my being here.

July 21

Wednesday, July 22, 2020

Barn loft studio

Over the past few months I have been puttering in the barn loft to shape it into a studio space in hopes of encouraging me to draw. It has been great fun rigging up lights, getting the radio/record player to work (thanks Rachel), and setting up drawing tables from our ... collection. Plus it worked, Dan is drawing.

Joe, finally / July 21

18 x 20 / graphite

Living Without Pause

From February 7th through the end of June I wrote over 80 poems; most during the stay-at-home time of the pandemic. I scrambled to get them typed and published before my access to ACS software expired; not to mention that the LuLu site I use sold-out in the meantime becoming as distant from user-centered as as any opaque corporate site could be.

That said, I was able to to manage an 8.5 x 11 version, just to have it (Also ordered a single copy of all my other titles because LuLu is not a place to store files (their bold).