1995 Road Movie “...had been a happy time.”

I'm continuing into Road Movie...

1995 Road Movie “...had been a happy time.” 

The mocking bird sets down on 

the fallen vase,

the wind quickens-- 

a reddening sky, the weather cools , 

I’m looking for the fish to arrive,

the new briskness of darkening skies

out back here, my studio 

painting outside, the hobo style

listening to jazz on the college station, 

hearing the resignation 

this place brings on, in my voice,

sounds like Schuyler and Ashbery, 

Fairfield and Georges

like that old recording of Pollock,

gone

god, but I love the good old fashioned 

sitting out in the air, 

mucking around for clams, burned 

and red, waiting till things are just right

this second order of reality 

A few beach roses left, 

mostly the red orange hips

the lilies are gone and the trumpet vine

out back, the candle is 

bleached, white 

from a certain red, the little boy in bronze 

amid some sun flowers 

the broken shells 

the rope intertwining 

the vase

“wading into the pink translucence” 

Ah! this is where I should be

the water rippling

These lines from, Road Movie, a continuing long poem I started in 1999. I was going over notes from 1995. I continued into 1997. There are twelve sections to the poem, this selection from the first.

#9, 1992, The Villa of the Sun

#9, 1992, The Villa of the Sun

Crossing the Susquehanna, 

the Blue Mountains, ahead-- 

feeling my way, 

a rainy South greets me 

as the Sun is shining yonder, 

in Mississippi arriving at the Gulf, 

a bushel of peaches 

a bag of blueberries, 

an aqua, emeralded

sea, beyond

white sands squeaking

warm, friendly, lapping waves.

17.

Oh! green, green 

wave folding over 

into a gurgling surge, enveloping, 

Driving back to camp 

high in mountains, roadways

nearing the tops of pines--

a Western Tanager, unconcerned, 

flashes in the waning sun,

snagging a fly... 

a merging of Imagination

and things as they are--

tired, making a way to camp.

Trying to figure, the pines in shadows,

dancing in the fire’s light, 

amongst icy cold frightening stars, 

curling down and away 

inside a down bag, retaining a warmth.

“Adventures and Wonder”--

scrawled on my paint box, enthralled!

A turn towards Montana

brings a surprisingly early snow

propelling me on my way.

A big sky, cold with 

low grey ceiling of clouds, 

out on a splendidly lonesome road.

Tightening the box of paintings 

to the car’s roof for the trip ahead, 

driving and reading 

about a hurricane about 

to strike Miami, 

it will be in Long Island, 

as I approach home.

Barcelona Neck, these symbols, 

evaporating in a whirl 

of rope, pots, flowers burnt in the sun 

swallowed up into the sky

a grid appearing, the wall flaking

crumbles, starts to fall--

a fiction composed upon the wall.

25.

From muddled silhouettes 

to comic form,

the black and white depth, 

to Barcelona Neck’s clarity

an old stage is being cleared

objects flowing

their prolific meanings

past, like the same flowers

they change... die

as if, it all was once believed.

(“...but it got us through.”) emptied 

to be filled, once more.

A figure with walking stick, 

greeting the birds, 

appraising space, tipping his hat, 

painting in the sun, 

reading in front of the Sunflowers--

A desire, at this late hour.

I am struck by how fragmented my poem had become. The abstraction of the city and its demands upon me had created a want or need for the spaces I had discovered in the West. This escape was to become my life of the next 10 years. The last section here was more of what was to come, than any real concentration on the Villa imagery-- the faded, cracking, old fresco which I had dreamed would be the what I still dreamed of creating-- The Myth of America.

#8, 1991 The Singer of the Sun

#8, 1991 The Singer of the Sun

You presented to me,

You, fish-shaped island,

Paumanok.

A flower, a shell.

Clouds, leaves, waves.

Red and yellow diamonds,

a dazzling wayfarer

on a romantic voyage, through

suns and planets

life and death.

A still life representing

a world, revolving-- objects

given meaning in their use.

Shells, Sunflowers, Vase.

The diamonded acrobat.

The shells are strung on a rope

gathered at the shore, 

stringing together, representing 

universes of circles, and 

the patterns of design,

in broken moments, 

strung to bind

death to life, 

juggling the cycle’s circle.

On the beach, barefoot

the perspective lines sharpen--

to a blank, blinking

the wanderer turns, on what?

picks up a shell, arranges a flower--

staring at the white wall.

The Knight of the road, arriving

sets up this still life, altar of flowers,

finds shells on the shore, 

reads the poetry of life and death

in the sunset, red, passing

“...no man shall see the end.” 

the reeds, the rock like island

arches, as the Dipper arcs ‘round

blinking the finality, 

through the silhouetted reeds.

The mythic form gives way to a narrative . I rocked back and forth from this narrative to more symbolic. Still do.

#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.

#6, 1989 "...surrounded by choral rings..."

#6, 1989 "...surrounded by choral rings..."

10.

Telephone poles march 

down the road, into the distance.

Grackles, flash up from feeding.

Desiring already, again

to put it all together,

some order

to that moment, seen.

A clear

moment

in the flower,

here!

a gross being alive

a thrown wave, 

green and warm--

22.

Painting this still life,

the shells on the beach

the sunflowers against the sky

a rope weaving circles to bind

a candle as time, a knife 

slicing the space through--

a bucket like the universe’s vessel

a little boy peeing in bronze--

the vase, friezes all of this

in the failing sun.

Clouds passing overhead

the narrow islands weather,

the difference between 

bay and ocean mind,

bells ring on swells.

Everything is broken,

a man in black turns--

washing my brushes, “I’m done.”

the reeds 

blaze red, in silhouette.

I  found as I painted a still life that summer, that each day the lily died as another bloomed each day. This direct experience of cycle lead me from the inner black and white to a door opened onto the outer world once again. I became interested in that transition or juxtaposition.

#5, 1988 "...like the leaves themselves turning..."

#5, 1988 "...like the leaves themselves turning..."

A surface hardened by repetition

becoming by shade

meaning less, distanced like Art.

14.

going over the shapes

of our minds, forming 

the world,

what we can see.

The merging of mind and object,

to fall into

the privileged moments,

as spots of time,

becoming part of, parcel,

a transparent eye, seeing--

the flower becomes one with the stars.

 I had visited Italy that year and made watercolors each day in the sunset. Sunset colors quivered 

with unresolved wonder, elegiac of a time of a possible resolution.

#4, from clouds, leaves, waves. 1987 Zuni / Goya

 #4 from clouds, leaves, waves. 1987 Zuni / Goya

...surging upward

breaking the surface

the prize grasped in his teeth!

Lights shine, mandala spins

all into one

a crystal light

flashes!

“This is the Truth!”

Coming from the darkness

still quite dim

we mutter, no--

stand up and shout,

this is it!

this Truth!

...naked, looking down at

tatters 

the wind, the burning bush in

swirls of stripes,

a flashing flag signals, Here!

From despair, to a recognition of a cycle which seems to contain some truth in between, or in the juxtaposition of ideas.

#3, from clouds, leaves, waves. 1986 Woman with Clothes Blowing in the Wind

 #3 from clouds, leaves, waves. 1986 Woman with Clothes Blowing in the Wind

12.

Chumash Indians in the Sierra 

Nevada, at the time of Goya

painting, Women with Clothes 

Blowing in the Wind--

tumbling through Sierras in Spain

a dry warm wind of inclusion, 

swirling, whirling gyres of winding 

reeds, generators of thought

and shells transmitted

through a projectors beam,

shadows of figures

on the tent’s walls

20.

The old woman’s clothes

blown in patterns like shells

thrown through beams of light,

whirling in a wind that

rushes through reeds,

Swoosh--

the stain of purple paint, 

peering into the layers

the striping wind in the mind, 

equating our thoughts thrown

on walls, gathering skirts

against the universe, 

on the high hill of an older time.

 It is interesting to me going back this far in time as I can now see more what I was thinking. Generally I was still wondering after my Mother's death 10 years before, what was going on. My philosophical pondering is finding it's relation in my investigation into the space of painting.

#2, from clouds, leaves, waves., 1985 "...like a dream vaguely remembered..."

“...around every circle another can be drawn,

that there is no end in Nature,

but every end is a beginning... and 

under every deep a lower deep opens.”

A figure in the landscape working.

13.

The works and days 

upon a frieze,

between the heavens and hells

inherent in our minds,

the longed for lands--

this toppled vase,

gathering the pieces,

I was surprised to see how early the circle, representing some kind of organic origin and whole idea appeared.  An environmental despair was already pervasive.

towards a selected Poems. #1, 1984 Achilles / Tent

I wondered if I might end up with a collected poems or a book of extracts from my long poems.

#1. 1984 Achilles / Tent

from the book, clouds, leaves, waves. 1996

Greek pots like nuclear shapes

the earth a broken vessel,

tossing the shards,

a pessimism growing

beyond good and evil, 

our hearts--

are of this darkness.

Striding the beach...

peeling back the canvas, 

entering the tent, falling to tripod,

exhausted downward weight-- 

“the wrong doing of Agamemnon!” 

black eyes melt the wall,

sinking-- Achilles tumbling,

gasping at round about horrors.

a thought of --Thetis! Arriving, 

a hand to his head

and release, to peaks of tent--

universe and stars, shining.




This is from the beginning of clouds, leaves, waves., a poem from 1996. The reference is from the Iliad I was reading back then, but I have never been able to find the exact part this refers to. I suppose I dreamed it in this changed version. It is all going downward and the Thetis touch to the head releases, it to the peaking.