Category Archives: Poetry

No Worries, Everything’s Okay Here! I’m doing Just Great! (Twitch, Twitch, Giggle)

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sketchbook

But my noodle is full of doodles!

Being and Nuttiness

Origami boats and hats

And frogs and swans

And paper cats

And chicken frills

And snowflake cuts:

These little pieces

Drive me nuts—

It’s not the cut-

And-paste, you see,

That makes me

Shake the acorn tree;

It’s just that

They should

Have the guts,

Barefaced, to call it

Therapy.

sketchbook

I mean, oodles of doodles!

 

Going Buggy

I wouldn’t say it bugs me

All that much to be indoors,

For after all my place is not

Much awfuller than yours,

Both having small enclosures and

These windows that won’t open,

And both beset with folks who have

Rude ways of interlopin’

Whenever you might think you’ve got

A chance to set things right

By putting forward fine ideas

Or going home at night,

But if it comes right down to choose,

I guess I’ll stick right here—

My rubber room; your office—

‘Least I’ll get reprieved next year.

And Now Let Us Pause for a Commercial Break, or at Least Some Blessed Radio Silence

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photoIf You Must be Tedious,

at Least be Mellifluous about It

In the immortal poet’s phrase,

No matter if the topic strays

From strictly epic or romantic

Off to something dull, pedantic

Or illogical, it sounds

Quite lovely in the swooping rounds

And swinging curvature of thought

The poet’s pretty words have got,

So if you must tell boring tales,

At least make sure that each regales

Us with its language so we won’t

Care if you say great things, or don’t.photo

Zero in, Zero out: I’m Done Thinking, Now

Vast emptiness and silence and that sucking black-hole sound,

Sheer nihilistic nothingness and open space abound,

But nothing has prepared me yet to deal with absent thought

So far as getting something Meaningful from it; I’ve not.

So, Nothing, nothing, nothing: that’s all I have to say.

If you want more, you’ll have to come back on another day.

I’ve spent my great invention quite completely and prefer

To take a break, relax, sit back, and hope you will concur.photo

Thoughtless Thursday

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Since a number of Web Wanderers post wonderful Wordless Wednesday items, and I’m always behind the times in oh-so-many ways, I’m posting my own version a day late (and undoubtedly a dollar short), giving you here a highly abbreviated visual history of my life as an artist. Since I’m only middle-aged, I let it end at the Middle Ages for now, though you’ll notice from some of the costumes in the last frame that I’m looking for a Renaissance to appear fairly soon. Can’t hurt to hope, can it?

P&I

I was no prodigy, and I certainly took an early interest in shortcuts and easy techniques when it came to making images, but I did always have an eye for a good juicy and dramatic storyline . . . P&IAs I grew more seriously interested in art, I was also reaching an age where one wants to Fit In, so I did my part of stylizing my imagery and making it seem, I thought, more palatable to the critics (teachers, relatives) . . .P&IThen, of course, there was that awkward age when I started to think for myself, to develop my own philosophy of what my art should or could be, and what I wanted it to be. Presumably, the reason I lost my reason entirely. You just can’t make your own art without giving up at least a little of your already tenuous hold on reality . . .P&I. . . and here you find me, wandering from village to village in the vast land of Internet, telling my tales and making my pictures without much regard for the safety and comfort of those around me, but perhaps in that most of all being at last quite true to myself, the mildly crazed artist in your midst . . .

I was Going to Write the Great American Novel, but I Looked out the Window for a Second and . . .

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My attention has drifted awry once again,

Has shifted from matters of weight among men

To things of no import, exceedingly tiny

And so insignificant–Hey! Look! It’s shiny!

I set out to do some magnificent thing,

But what it was? I can’t remember. The sting

Of memory loss in old age will be naught

Compared to the blank Inattention has wrought,

Distraction, and phantasmagorical dreams;

To focus and think is more work than it seems,

So, though I’d meant well and begun my great task,

My progress dried up like a sot’s whiskey flask,

And instead of inventing great stuff, plodding darkly,

I did something else–Hey! Look there! Something sparkly!

mixed media on glass

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird! It's a plane! Hey, it's my attention flying way off course again!

We are Feline Fine, Thank You

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graphite drawingTransubstantiation

Fish-eyes ogles us, just to say

in that slippery longing way of his,

that sidelong gaping staring way,

‘I envy the cat that milady is.’

We ponder his liquid love, his fins,

and the way each turn makes him squirm and sink

in the tank (predicament for his sins?),

and we sit and groom ourself and think . . .

Can’t help but pity and love the poor

fish-eyes in turn; think biology,

its cycles, return of what’s been before,

carbon reclamation, and all that we,

with wizard knowledge, learned to admire

and along the way, to recognize

as an opportunity to acquire

matter remade thus if one only tries . . .

what we think is this: that a little fish

could become a cat, graceful, sleek and slim,

by means of becoming a dinner dish–

and on thinking that, we devour him.

Tools and Techniques, Ingredients and Inspirations

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ink drawingSometimes the best way to get started with something new is to jump into something old and rethink it. Writing letters–really, reeeeeeally long and extravagantly detailed letters–to my friends and loved ones was a favored pastime for me in my youth, and only transmuted (rather than muted) over time. It’s not necessarily that I had so much to say, nor that it was terribly original, it was simply a pleasant way to keep my sense of the connection between us open and flowing freely. It was Relationship Anticoagulant for me, in its way. Most particularly because I happened to have friends and loved ones who indulged me by writing letters back in my direction.

Yes, the telephone had already been invented when I was young. (I heard that!) My letters weren’t even delivered by Pony Express, let alone chiseled on stone tablets, though those would’ve made nice doorstops, once read. But as I have never liked telephone chitchat overmuch and have always had a slight tendency toward commentary that could perhaps stand a little more editorial restraint, and most of all because I am so defined by my visual experiences, a written, tangible and yes, correctable medium like a letter suited my personality more.

I think it was at least partly that that led to my downhill slide into essays, poems, short stories and the various other Dark Magicks of creative writing. Maybe I thought that developing my fictional skills would make my long letters more entertaining and excuse their verbosity. But of course, when the mystical world of the internet appeared before me, it was inevitable that I should embrace its friendliness towards the mass production of verbiage and the speedy transport thereof unto all and sundry. “All” being my actual known connexions and “sundry” being anybody else who was incidentally caught in the overspray. The latter being people who, if they foolishly responded to my wildly flung words, were likely to get sucked right into the vast vacuum of joining my poor captive audience if I could manage it at all.

ink drawingWhen I figured out how to put visual images along with all of the wordy wonders, then Boy Howdy, I was off on a new tangent. And you’ve all seen just how tangential I can become. Why, just the other day . . . oh, see, there I go again. The additional enhancement of putting pictures with stories need not be examined here. You and I know that the telling of a tale not only frequently requires images for completeness and clarity but sometimes is enhanced and enriched by the presence of visual cues that lead the reader to start thinking about the stories tangentially as well.

I was of course drawn* in immediately by artists’, photographers’, designers’ and other visually rich websites and blogs (*this pun’s for you, yearstricken). Then I felt the magnetic, hypnotic pull of foodie blogs, with their perniciously gorgeous food photography. Glorious gardens and magnificent architectural edifices reached out of the ether to grasp at my ankles as I passed. Tripping, I dropped into the well of travelogues and vehicle- and furniture-restoration sites and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! It was the beginning of the end for this visually obsessed fool. Pretty soon I was swapping recipes and anecdotes, recitations and antidotes with all of my new Old Friends. I almost made a Freudian typo there and wrote Fiends, because of course I have been enchanted and enslaved by you all and am now helplessly in thrall, thirsting after the goodies you dangle in front of me on your every post until I succumb and retaliate with posts of my own.

ink drawing

So here we all are, the relatively new digital tools in hand, cooking up marvelous messes of every sort and, far from being penitent, diving ever deeper into the strange and cheerfully dangerous tangles of what we are collectively wreaking upon the unsuspecting of the world. What began as relatively innocent missives to sisters and schoolmates, great aunts and great mentors has evolved into a different sort of Post that explodes with the weird and whimsical, the frightening or florid or sometimes just plain fishy, and whether factual or fictional, wanders the globe and the magnificent bubble of nonsense surrounding it, and the old urge to write a letter is made new again.

Now, I’ll readily admit that it’s every bit as possible to create fodder for the dustbin as it was all those centuries ago when I began writing my small-world tall tales and detailing them with quaint and creaky little scratches of “art”, and I’m quite certain that there’s no more sense and treasure sneaking in the hidden corners of my productions than there ever was. But I do find that the wider range of correspondents who really do have something to say in return, and the pleasures of the process of learning and using new and different tools for the conversation, immensely entertaining, energizing and inspiring. And I’d say that’s a paint pot of a different color.

ink drawing

Mrs. Sparkly’s Ten Commandments, I Mean Ten Questions. And More.

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photoI am “It”. No, really, that’s not just my Godzilla-sized ego talking: I’ve been tagged, and I didn’t even know there was a game going on. So very like me to be caught unawares. Least I was wearing more than just my “underwears”!

Among the activities in which the denizens of Bloggervania indulge are those through which we unmask various bits and bobs of our selves for mutual edification or at least amusement. This can be dangerous or great fun, depending upon whom you ask what, but then that’s the way it always goes, isn’t it. The promise of a nice sunny afternoon swapping gossip over a cuppa suddenly turns into a sword-fighting bloodbath. Oh, no, that was the murder mystery I was reading last night. Never mind!photo

Here’s what I got asked, followed by my to-the-best-of-my-knowledge-true answers.

1.  Describe yourself in seven words.

I can do it in 1: Rich. Okay, here are six others, but they’re all extrapolations of the first: loved, happy, curious, privileged, encouraged, playful.

2.  What keeps you up at night?

Brain-spin. I’m a very good sleeper generally speaking, but if I don’t quiet my mind by bedtime and shut down the wacky-factory, there’s no telling how long it’ll keep me too busy to sleep.

3.  Whom would you like to be?

The best version of me I can manage. Too much work to figure out how to be anyone else!

4.  What are you wearing now?

Jeans and a comfy shirt suitable for doing chores between bouts of typing.

5.  What scares you?

Other people’s drama.

6.  What are the best and worst things about blogging?

In my circle, we all seem to experience the same basic risks and rewards: the risk of losing ourselves completely in the effort and time of dedicated blogging, and the reward of working amid and coming to respect and love such stellar folk as populate the blogging community. Come to think of it, that pretty much encapsulates what I think is good or bad about any activity for which one has a passion.

7.  What was the last website you looked at?

Retire Early Lifestyle, a travel, food, culture and off-the-beaten-path-living journal produced by the only friends I’ve acquired through online conversation before I began blogging, and a site that is simply a joy to visit.

8.  If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

Let go of fear.

9.  Slankets, yes or no?

I have three perfectly excellent reasons to Just Say No to Slankets: 1-The skill a perpetually freezing person develops for dressing in layers more numerous and impressive than those boasted by the best millefoglie, 2-A really cuddly husband, and 3-What, I need to make a bonfire out of my money because I don’t know how to wrap up in a plain blanket to get warm?

10. Tell us something about the person who tagged you.

John comes from good stock. By that I mean that he has great familial roots, and that they are such natural foodies that he learned early to appreciate and make excellent soups, among many other classic Italian dream-foods. He documents all of this, and much more, on the wonderfully warm, witty, artful and delicious pages of From the Bartolini Kitchens, all while being himself ever the debonair gentleman-about-town and as sweet as fragole.

Whom are you going to tag to join the quiz?

I hope I’ve not “double-tagged” anyone. I’ll just go alphabetically here, for fun:

  1. Antoinette at cooking-spree
  2. Bella at winsomebella
  3. Cyndi at cfbookchick
  4. Dennis at thebardonthehill
  5. Eden at litrato-ngayon

photoMy blogging friend Antoinette, she of the wonderful aforementioned site where you can learn from her expertise how to put “Love on the Table” but more importantly, the myriad ways she expands that love into a multitude of life’s little nooks and crannies, all with a measure of mindfulness and gentle good humor–this lady asked me yesterday the perfectly innocent question “how . . . do you do this?” Since the bellissima Bella (also tagged above) soon thereafter made a comment that begged the same question, and I have fielded a few inquiries in a similar vein over the last six months of blogging, I am going to take the self-indulgent opportunity to spout off a bit on the topic today.

Many folk simply wonder how it’s possible for me to post a new and (mostly) different essay, poem, story or combination of them, illustrated with my own art and photography, every single day. They politely edge up to the corollary question of whether I don’t have a big closet full of old stuff that I’m just pinning up in public as I go. If it’s any consolation, yes, I have been producing things like this for a rather long time. Yesterday’s post (https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/what-were-you-born-in-a-barn/) is a perfect example: the cow sketch is from some doodling in a notebook nearly 30 years ago (and digitally doctored yesterday); the rooster and hens scratched their way into my sketchbook last year; the birds were among many sketched multi-panel proposals for a set of organ pipeshade carvings around 7 or 8 years ago; and the pastel of the Cheviot ewe and the Highland cow is from about two years ago.

Some of the illustrations I use (photographic or drawn/painted) are completely, hot-off-the-pencil new, a few are practically archeological finds from my vast trove, and some are oldies that have been digitally “remastered” (dolled up or changed) to fit the occasion. Almost every visual image requires some tweaking or re-formatting for the blog medium or to better reflect and expand upon the text in some way. Regular readers will have noticed that I am not averse to using the images’ captions to try to intensify the relationship and relevance, ‘specially if the connection was a little tenuous or artificially-imposed at the start.

In addition, I do have a (digital) reserve of hundreds and hundreds of picture + text images like the ones I used on Tuesday (https://kiwsparks.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/its-foodie-tuesday-and-i-havent-eaten-yet/), set up like book pages, where I guess without knowing it I was practicing a variant of the sort of combined word and image that I’m now putting in this blog. I try not to dip into that storage much, if nothing else to prevent my getting lazy or stale or not producing anything strictly new. There is a remote possibility that they will someday in fact be used to produce actual books, but realistically, publishers are inundated with stuff they find much more relevant and exciting, and like most artist-types I hate the drudgery of trying to sort out the whole business end of book production. Hence my standing on this soapbox handing out free samples daily. And I thank you all for coming by Speakers’ Corner (though since I live in Texas I suppose I should pretend it’s in Rawhide Park) here for visits so I don’t die of neglect and boredom.

digital compositionThe prose of my posts is never older than a few days (and that, only if I happen to have gotten a day or two ahead in writing), but nearly always written on the same day the posts go online. The poems are a mix of old and new. I started wading in poetic and essayist waters as a mere stripling, and as long as twenty years ago spent a twelvemonth writing five poems a day for discipline. Yes, mostly short forms! A couple of years ago, I did a one-drawing-a-day year, and I’m gearing up to get back to somewhat more regular drawing and art-making, so hopefully I’ll be posting more ‘fresh produce’ soon, but having unused images in storage takes an nth of the pressure off of the blog production. As it is, the process takes me several hours of the day to get through both creating the post itself and the related correspondence.

graphite drawing + textAnd it does take time. I wouldn’t be able to do this other than extremely sporadically if I had a “real” job, that’s for sure. Working from home, I can keep up with laundry and cooking and housekeeping and that sort of thing without losing the flexible hours it takes to do this. That’s the big issue for me: I have a husband who values my art and writing enough to have supported my leaving my previous employment and kept us in financial safety with his own work, and that is a rare and fabulous gift indeed. Or a cruelty to you, if you happen to think I should have kept it to myself. But then, I like to think you’re all smart enough to not show up here if I weary you with my nattering.

Having noted that, I suppose it’s time to address the Why of it all. But that’s embedded in the whole Who-What-When-Where-How of it all, isn’t it. I do this because it gives me joy to play with words and pictures, and because I’m not necessarily cut out to do something else, and most especially because by sharing stories I find new marvelous and inspiring friendships and loves, and renew the best of those I already have, all of which serve to infinitely reinforce my knowledge that I am Rich.

mixed media collage

Gold, Mine (detail from a mixed media collage)

It’s Foodie Tuesday and I Haven’t Eaten Yet

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When I was an undergraduate, our university operated on a semester basis, and required all lower-classmen to take a course during the Interim month of January. As the courses offered during that period were designed in part as a testing ground for future standard semester courses (‘experimental’), in part as cram-courses for catching up a missed class in compressed time or as courses that otherwise didn’t fit into the typical academic demands of a semester or involved travel, they tended to be highly desirable classes anyway, and I opted to continue my Interim studies during all four years of my undergrad education. It came in very handy in my senior year after I’d taken a whole semester of the previous year to travel in Europe (non-academically, but spending my school funds all the same) and really needed to finish school in 3-1/2 years rather than the full four to compensate.

But the real benefit of the system was that I got to take a delightful course somewhat off the beaten path of my degree each January. One year, it was ‘Chinese Conversation, Culture and Cuisine‘–a supremely entertaining class team-taught by two brilliant New York Jews and their Chinese grad student (the team in itself a refreshment in the midst of a perfectly fine ‘white-bread’ west coast Lutheran uni education). Two days a week, one or the other of our professors would lecture on Chinese history and culture, slipping in lots of anecdotal hijinks from their respective times studying in China; one day was a practicum devoted to classic Chinese cookery, and was needless to say the day of perpetual perfect attendance for and by all in that class, given how hungry undergraduates always are for good food; and one day was spent focusing on the development of Chinese written and spoken languages, with some rudimentary training in making Mandarin-like sounds and practicing the beautiful strokes of character calligraphy to accompany what the sounds should, at least, have meant, though I’ve no doubt that what we actually said translated as something much more in the comical-infant-to-international-crisis-causing range. One of the few things that’s stuck with me for all of the intervening years was learning that the proper greeting was not Howdy or Hey, Baby, but Have you eaten rice today? And of course, that is heart and soul of compassion and hospitality in any culture or language. Would that we all might operate more fully on the basis of that concern.photo + text graphicAll of this wisdom aside, I guess it’s hardly rare for anyone as food-obsessed as I am to generally forget to eat once in a while. Here it is already 18.00 hours and I haven’t eaten more than a handful of pistachios. And those, not recently. Tasty though they were, I imagine I might not be just dreaming that I could enjoy a slightly more substantial repast before long. But sometimes I think a little semi-fasting is not a bad thing, because it may, for example, begin to ameliorate any damage done to my innards, and any, erm, expansive qualities reflecting that internal damage in my out-ards, over certain recent holidays by a slightly over-enthusiastic or exaggerated sense of my capacious personage’s actual dietary needs. Also because, being frank here (though I generally prefer the name Frances/is, should anyone ask), a short period of partial abstemiousness only serves to enhance the pleasures of the simplest foods.

And that’s what I’ll have today: the simplest. A little fridge-cleaning bite while paused from a somewhat overweening stack-up of household chores left too long undone, messes unattended. But I can’t say that I’ve any objections at all to a little truly simple food goodness, so I shall indulge in that momentarily. I’ll leave you with some verses to chew upon until my return on the morrow. Bon appetit! Or as we say in my family, Vær så god. That’s far more appetizing, I’m sure, than what I would have said in Chinese, no matter how good my intentions.photo + text graphicphoto + text graphicphoto + text graphic

Mirrors and Mosaics

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Self-Portrait in Tessellation

I never see myself but in the smallest part,

all others quite obscured by my beliefs,

incessant shadows of my little griefs

and the convictions of this moment’s heart–

in tiny pieces shaped by this day’s faith,

see this week’s angle; my fragmented soul

seen but in shards, not as a whole:

instead of spirit, as an empty wraith–

I hope that I will someday finally see

this whole chaotic multitude in view,

convened, a coalescent scene anew,

those fine mosaic atoms that are Me

photo

Where do we seek for the patterns of ourselves?

Truthfully, I hope never to get the full view of myself–that seems to me something to be experienced only at the very end of life, and as the old story goes, I’m not eagerly “gettin’ up a busload to go today”. Let’s hope the afterlife can wait for me a goodish bit yet. But it’s sometimes edifying to view myself with a modicum of dispassion, a fair step back from the funhouse mirror where I tend to see myself with automatic criticism, for good or ill, and not with honest clarity and fairness.

Ms. CF, that sage lady over at cfbookchick, posted a marvelous piece that should encourage us all to look inward and see whether we’re not a little overzealous in measuring and judging self and others. As she says, “self doubt is a terrible monster,” and it’s frighteningly easy to be caught up in obsessive condemnation of our own failures or shortcomings as well as those we paint on others. Few truly sharp universal definitions of standards and requirements exist to tell us just who, how or what anyone ought to be, so we tend to invent our own more than we’ll readily admit, and so, being judge and jury by default in our own courts–well, it’s easy to take prisoners and not so easy to ever show quite as much mercy as we should. When is it time to let go of all the old baggage, or at least put it away in long-term storage, and forgive ourselves and others?

digital image

We’re all looking for patterns, for clues . . .

I May be Getting the Hang of It

Tumbling on fifty-one years

Of joy and quiet wonder, fears,

Of curiosity and laughs,

Of writing songs and epitaphs,

I think I’m finding here at last

Direction from each annum past

To lead me forward to explore

At least another fifty more

VBA logo #3

See, whatever the current state of the union-or-disunion in my being, I’m in a mighty happy spot in life these days. Getting my blogging groove on bit by bit and learning along the way. Surrounded by standouts who take me under their measureless wings and fly me around at irresistibly dizzying height just as though I actually belonged there, and are teaching me how to flap my own flimsy excuse for a set of wings. Clumsy I may be, but having a high old time and loving the exhilarating and weird sensation of the familiar earth being transmuted into something quite new, sometimes shocking, and decidedly intriguing. And people keep popping over to my aerie to drop prizes and presents into my humble and shaggy version of a nest. I’m running out of mantel space in the ol’ nest, and getting quite the kick out of the whole thing, thank you very much. Lately I’ve had another set of trophies and treasures conferred upon me by fellow sojourners in the Merry Old Land of Blog to the degree that instead of falling out of the nest in self-abnegation I’m more likely to be overinflated and drift off in my helium-fillled happiness, giving a queenly wave as I float over thanking the Little People who helped me feel like the grand success I am today.

My more honest self, however, weighs it all in the balance and says that I am simply most fortunate to have these new digs in bloggerville and thus be surrounded by such great neighbors–wiser, more experienced, and incredibly generous souls who raise me up to their natural locations in the heights. Today I am especially cognizant of the gifts shared with us all, and me in particular, with me by two fine exemplars of this communal outreach through art and kind critical support.

I am grateful to dear Geraldine, the Alternative Poet, for granting me the Versatile Blogger Award. Her passion for and championing of contemporary poetry that puts up no walls of opacity in front of readers but rather invites us in with magical and graceful turns of phrase able instead to allow us clearer views through an artful and inspired window is a great gift in itself. She shares not only her own lovely work with us but the safe haven in which the rest of us are encouraged to be our best selves in this vein. I am grateful, too, to dear ‘Nessa, who is inclined to open veins while writing from her Stronghold that sometimes seem to me to put her at fearful personal risk, but does so with such mature passion that it’s compelling even when frightening–all the while offering astonishingly tireless words of kindness and endorsement to the rest of us. None have better deserved the designation Liebster [Beloved] in blogging, and yet here she is handing it along to others, including me.

Yes indeedy, I can still see that oddly, eccentrically fragmented and distorted self-image of mine, but I really don’t dislike or fear it anymore. It’s just one part of who I am, more relevant in explaining my exceedingly long and poky version of Overnight Success than anything frightfully du jour, so I’ll just let it hang around there, cracked mirror that it is, incomplete and insignificant in the grand scheme of my present day. Which is where I prefer to live, relegating my past to the past, my grudges and demons and failures Most Embarrassing Moments and any other unresolved or unresolvable junk to less accessible and current places, and just plain get on with things. Take that, not-so-Fun-house mirror! I have better things to do with my days, and am already having too nice a life, whether it’s deserved or not, to be bothered hanging around in dusty corners staring at what I don’t much care to be anyhow. Toodle-oo! Find yourself somebody else to gnaw at, begone and good riddance! I’m headed back into the sunshine to play!

Liebster Blog Logo

Musica Mnemonica

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photoI Keyboard Position

(For HH & JDH)

I went to hear a singer sing his due

Recital and to learn to love his voice,

Yet on the instant knew I had no choice

But watch th’ accompanist and think of you,

For when they came onstage a dream began

As German art-songs sung up from a deep

Chasm of voice that ought to haunt my sleep,

My heart was drawn instead to that tall man

Curled over the piano in that soft,

Sprung posture that in you I used to know,

When you assumed it, meant that you would go

Anon, and play your listeners aloft

To dazzling heights of ecstasy and free-

Fall back with us to depths of bronze despair

Because your fluid playing pulled us there,

And art, remembered now, that let me see

That this man taught those notes to you, each one,

And from his posture, know you were his son.photo collage

II Nocturne

(For JDH)

You always play the Evensong or toll

The close of Compline on that rank of keys

That lets the darkness in at night and sees

No morning come again where dawn should roll

Its banner out, because your day is past,

Untimely so, and others left behind

Whose love for you through music was refined,

And evening services to hold us fast

Within your arms; now elders play the songs

As you’d have done if time had let you play

A lifetime–even just another day–

With melody to right the thousand wrongs

That took you from our midst, that stopped the tune,

Left only other hands to tend the notes,

And threw you like a star among the motes

Before you could play in another June.

Now summers come no more, nor daylight’s dawn,

Though through the night your music lingers on.photo