OPEN STUDIO POEM #18
aplomb
solid
chrysanthemum
collage
secluded
Under snow, under solid ground,
earth knits a fabric of mycelium,
bulb, the roots of chrysanthemum
and rose. The February landscape
shapes a shifting collage
of branch and cloud,
a splash of of jay-blue.
We stay secluded, painting
our lives with aplomb.
Open Studio Poem #17
disco
lickety-split
splendid
magenta
Fairies shelter behind the disco ball
hung in the portal to the kingdom of odd.
After sunset, they emerge lickety-split,
and all night they dance through the city,
their magenta wings flashing splendid
in the lights of streets, and traffic, and stars.
The other occupants of the Open Studio are out to get me, as you can see. But I know where that disco ball hangs, and I know the fairies, too.
Open Studio Poem #3: USE THE WHOLE PAGE
The point is growth toward beginning.
Start again—nothing flat or square—
this time learn to move in three
dimensions—cubic, spherical. Can you
write like a dancer? Paint
like an actor? Draw like—
a potter? Remember knitting—
how to turn a heel, shape
a sleeve from a strand.
DO THAT WITH WORDS.
USE THE WHOLE PAGE.
FILL IT WITH SHAPE AND
COLOR AND SOUND AND FLAVOR—
BITTER GREENS AND HOT PEPPERS
AND LEMON ZEST. WRITE
BIG AND ROUND.
USE THE WHOLE PAGE
OPEN STUDIO POEM #4
final granite light synchronize
Rilke said, “No feeling is final.”
Not even granite is permanent—
it crumbles and weathers into parts.
And isn’t it a fine thing
that nothing stays the same?
Time is after all unsynchronized space,
shifting into shapes that cannot last.
Therefore, do not fret.
Keep your touch light,
or maybe don’t touch at all.
Simply breathe.
I finally figured out that I can do a screen shot of my formatted poem and publish it as an “image.” Good grief. This poem has been in my “to blog” file for ages because the format matters so much. It’s about a wonderful film about Pina Bausch.
cap rigid lemon peer draw meadow
SESTINA FOR THE SUMMER OF 2020
Like a drawing by Van Gogh,
I stand rigid in the meadow. I wear my white cap.
I peel a lemon, and peer at the trees.
I wear my white cap
though the brim is too rigid
for me to bend against the lemon-
brightness of the sun. I stand alone, peer
into the middle distance like a drawing
by Van Gogh of a woman in a meadow.
It is August, and the earth is dry. The meadow
crackles with brown grasses capped
with seeds. The summer draws
to a close. Have we yet let go our rigid
sense of what is real? My peers
cannot guess. News sours me, like lemon.
When I was young, I wore lemon
cologne. I lay in this meadow
beside a man—my peerless
lover—who wore a Greek fishing cap.
But our bones have gone rigid
with the years. We have drawn
living water so long. Now we draw
water grown bitter, like lemon
rind, and brackish, from a rigid
bottle. A butterfly wavers over the meadow
searching for one plant to cap
with one pale egg. I peer
at her with shaded eyes, my only peer
now in this tight-drawn
season, this heated season, capped
with grasses the color of dried lemon
peel. Under my feet, the meadow
soil is hard, cracked, rigid
with the hard rigidity
of this rainless summer, a peerless
summer of an anxiety that a meadow
cannot know. The trees live on, drawing
their life from deeper water. The lemon
sun beats and beats on my white cap.
LABYRINTH
Red boards, white halls.
Posters and paint.
The inside of a piano.
A washer full of light.
Two stairways
to one long corridor.
You do not have a clue.
You do not need one.
If you are lost, cry out,
no doubt someone
will hear you.
You will always be found.
What you do
is up to you.
At the center—
no minotaur—
a glass door. Behind it,
earnest, commanding
fairies are waiting.
What did you expect?
Their Queen,
at first glance seems
innocent, unwinged.
Little do you know.
Her throne a desk.
Her wand a pen.
Enter at your peril.
Are you ready
to love the edges?
To practice not-doing?
Are you ready
to change your life?
I wrote this years ago for my friend Maggie, who at age 80 started modeling for art students, because, she said, “They need to know what old people look like.” She liked the poem, and recorded herself reading it back to me. She died a couple of years ago, in her 90s. I miss her.
DRAWING LESSON
—in memory of Maggie Miller
Here you are, most with a world ahead,
some with half a world behind,
come to draw the human form.
And here I am naked before you
so comfortable, easy
in my eighty year old skin.
I love my folds,
metamorphosed mountains.
You think you can draw
an old woman, dear babies?
Lean in, look hard.
It will cost you all your life.
I have been down deep,
through muscle, sinew, bone.
Loved long a man long dead,
borne a son and let him go.
I am learning how to pray
and I laugh when you ask me to tell.
In my time I have come
to the heart’s solid core–
heat of life and more–
Now over you I pour
my fire like water.
From where I lie I see
the place the stars will rise.
COUNTRY WEDDING
~Berthe Morisot, 2019
Oil on canvas
Stacked blocks of whiteness
narrow to a steeple.
A white tent stretches
over blue shade. Shapes
of color clothe the guests.
All around is green.
In the midground,
five children scamper
with two yellow dogs.
Close to the frame,
two women— one
in red boots— and three
men are playing bocce.
Their shadows are long.
Deep in the trees
a robin starts a song.
MORNING NOISE
~Jackson Pollock, 2019
Oil on cardboard
You can hear them, can’t you? Bursts of red and
white and gray—those pickups early on the
road, and the big silver milk truck, there, clear
streak across. The woodchip truck that always
uses jake brakes going down the hill—long
black jag. And underneath and around—back-
ground and more than background—a kind of fore-
ground really—are the birds. Can you hear them?
Sure you can. Rose-breasted grosbeak, redstart,
red-eyed vireo, white-throated sparrow,
goldfinch, red-bellied woodpecker, blue jay,
and clearest, that woodthrush just out of sight.
GladErrand 