#7, 1990 The Seasons

#7, 1990 The Seasons

29.

Looking for Sun!

Walt Whitman’s, Paumanok island

he came to own on afternoons 

patrolling

different coves and bends,

a fish-shaped island.

Walking, blank upon the sand

a staff aflame,

the shadblow blooming in April, 

as the mockingbird,

our feathered friend from Alabama,

arrives!

by night on the beach.

Strolling, alone in a thought,

the lilacs by the porch,

a song of the soul, singing 

in a straw hat, picnicking 

on the beach in the hot August sun,

fish roil down the shore, gulls

in laughter recoiling, in northern

winds, arriving.

How about a sailboat to paint from

and explore?

...clam and fish?

Making a still life, a poetry 

on the bay, where Walt had walked...

33.

The hero, 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

Suns and Planets.

Singing the praises in the sunset,

a staff aflame, 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.

I had started going out to paint still lifes by the bay each summer again as I did in early seventies.

In this activity I saw the constant change.

The Seasons were the myth, of this present constantly passing, which I sought to explain.

 The narrative here is in it's beginning stages.