Clouds, leaves, waves. 1990

1990

The Seasons

cycles flash-- 

repeating the round, 

There is reality where

memory of life and the moment 

are one, looking forward.

a turning point,

through seasons

Is there a height

possible? maybe a geographic move

to the outside,

this subconscious-- a crutch?

framing the present with

the past and future

Spring through Winter

clouds, leaves, waves-- shells

gather, swirling in clouds, circling

through leaves, passage...

the journey

the wind of time

in reeds, gyres of...

repeating a mantra

coming towards one,

bang-- the day

a colored classic, up front

close, living now!

the still life tumbles

shells, sunflowers, circling rope

the vase breaking, change and

decline from

the immediate moment

Autumn, the fall-- the comedian leaving

winter’s dreams and wandering

Crispin self,

Sunflowers on his breast,

incarnations of an inner frost

are hidden. The mask

summons a shield, 

imagination-- suggesting

red diamonds set in yellow sun.

Stop!

vertical gasp, creates a height--

possibility

of a returning idea

as the earth each day, returning

from night into light.

now arise

tripping

through the day, seeking Sun--

diamond’s sun and the

spiraling shells-- tumbling

the waves continue

unfolding this day, 

a sunflower in the blue sky.

the windy weather

filling differences.

Shell twirling cosmos

receding

dreaming

the future’s Ideal form

always beyond

this surface of Reality held

in elasticity between

the Dream and the Ideal,

a Fate-- Freedom-- and Power

revolving.

propped in dream

between the what one 

(thought) that happened

and the Ideal that might--

A troubadour in the sun, afoot

riding the crest of day!

two figures walking through reeds,

the wind picks up, leaves,

shells, dream designs, circling

a vase looming, beyond.

16.

A Joker, spirit Sun

trickster joking, eyedazzling--

Harlequin of cubism!

striving, but broken--

the end of painting

the end of nature

a still life, set

to bridge a gap

we feel,

The modern, a gimmick

always past in our hearts,

that fiction, created to disguise

our failure. Living in this

rubble of concrete boxes, housing

we’ve named it, this separation

from nature or God, a lousy story

retold in outworn shape.

Climbing, again.

A painting-- of still life

in our climate

(of sad ecological disaster) 

no need for ironic subterfuge.

“like a blindness cleansed”

I lift my hat to that fish-shaped island, Paumanok.

This friend of birds,

sees snakes with rings,

hears wood-peckers laugh,

jays, squawking their raucous

thought in pines, as

crickets scatter before bells 

jingling on cautious feet.

blank upon the sand

his staff aflame,

the black oldsmobile horn’s blare.

Exchanging presence for distance

Achilles merging with Crispin,

then, as Walt,

“...this book is a man.”

all the birds have died.

A sparrow fights a starling,

a cowbird 

raids another’s nest.

no rescuing spaceships 

out there, seen, still

the tragedy, of the planet.

afoot with vision

Chaplinesque, a picaresque saint

a friend of birds, as St. Francis

in Giotto, holding Sunflowers 

for Vincent and Lilacs for Walt,

the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance, 

over which a figure, returning

awakening from sleep, Pierrot!

A jar overturned by the spring

wind, sprinkling seeds, to the air

a black rope interwinds and weaves

a string of shells 

dragged behind, sunflowers

darkening...

a book of poetry, upended 

at the tide line, 

wading off into the pink 

translucence, at the end

of that summer’s day.