Walking Poem #24

Its very quiet out here this morning.
All the chipmunks and squirrels are sleeping.
The humming birds too.
I have been grabbed by hope
instead of expectation.
Hope sometimes feels like lack.

I say this and the sounds of nature begin.
The gentle rise of the birds calling, “Hello!”.
The hum of the insects who do not pine for anything!
The crescendos of human noises far in the background.
A plane flies overhead.

There’s a ruby glow to the light on the dried grasses.
In the shadows, the trunks of trees reach deep into the earth.
They never think of the past.
They are immersed in the drenching nature of the present.
Drinking up all their needs.
Right here and now.

The spiders’ filaments shimmer translucent turquoise.
The hawk flies by six feet above the ground.
So swiftly but they do not meet.

Then I watch the hawk at work.

The Greatist Thing

Its the greatest thing in the world, to be an artist. To have an avenue for expression, passion and inspiration.
Don’t underestimate this gift in life. It can feed you emotionally, physically, financially and spiritually.

Deep in that space of creating is you. The essence, alive and kicking, waking up, being born. Again and again.
Forego the “Nay” sayers. They are only repeating their programming. Walk deeply into your life. Take it by the hands, lead, be lead. Roam and dream and make. Stay home and spin and create.

It is all one way of being. In spirit, in life, in the dark and the light.

Mystery & Momentum

When I thought about making art the other day, the word “transcendence” came to me. But then I realized that word can be judged in a much too narrow way. As mystical perhaps. And then it occurred to me, the word “mystery” would suffice.

As part of what I , as an artist, am both responding to and searching for.

These mysteries, these questions about life are all around us. And each unique life has its own mysteries that perhaps transcend the concrete, condition-driven world.

Momentum is the other word that came to me. The movement that begins and carries on.
The jet as it crosses the sky. The tree as it falls. The sweep of wind that trembles the flowers.
Subsiding and then gathering speed, momentum.

How to capture momentum in a still image?

The wide open feeling of running next to the ocean as the waves, in their own momentum, move towards shore. What is that thrill?
When the wind takes off and moves objects in my world, in my path.
I’m thrilled by the wind. Inspired by the gentle sway or the full force gale.
And here I am a painter so in a way I’m always stopping movement! I want to fill my stationary observation to remember movement. For the viewer to know the movement that takes them to this moment and then moves them away.
What came before? What comes after? Movement and time in painting.

How to listen to the Universe

This week, next week, who knows.
I am a cocoon, I am a butterfly. One minute one thing, another minute another thing.
I have coins in my pockets.
They jingle and jangle.
They slip easily out and even more easily in.
I am a weathervane. I am reading the weather.
I can be turned around, I can be steady as I sit in the sun, soaking.

You are a tree with its arms around me.
I am in the winter with you
I have to wait. Continue to wait
Am I not a jewel? Many faceted.
Am I not your deep-hearted friend? At your beck and call?
You beckon me, I come.
I am swathed in all that you love. Remember to love.
Be approachable, be sincere. I care and much is at hand.
Much is in the bounty we call life.
Your green rolling hills will come. Are here somwhere. Are just beyond the rise in the land outside your window.
Can you reach for it?
Can you see and sense it

Trouble doesn’t find you. You are not alone.
You are in the drop of water with me.
We are falling together through the air
We land together softly
We are together softly.
We are everywhere, all the time.
Come with me.
Lets cross arms, lets walk together
Let’s feel the snow melt on our faces as we melt into nothingness and everything.
Again and again.
The water drop breaks the surface of the pond.
The pond responds, the pond know without knowing.
The pond is just the pond and the drop of water joins it.

Space-finder

I am curious about space.
The space we see, the space we create, the space we sense inside and out.

The swirling flatness of surprizing depth
The unintended dimensionality
The surprize and delight, the wonder.

Found in the knowledge that so many worlds co-exist
That time is not a commodity
And space can function beyond time.

Being an artist? Artist as being?

I am a certain type of artist.
I don’t always make

Having many shelves upon which are items left behind
Some intentional, some not.

I am in a dark forest
I am in the West Texas brush
I am by a wide, still river moving steadily to the Gulf of Mexico
I am in the willowy wilds before I reach the mountains
Where I am in a dark forest again.

I am a circle repeating
Climbing out of time into the present
My beating heart repeats longings
And I listen when I can.

Autumn Poem

Oh you aqua sky,
with black leaves climbing
a silhouette we know…so familiar
the spreading Buckeye’s leaves
the nesting Chestnuts’ impromptu Notan
I am with you, wholehearted
I am looking past the reflections of life
past all the proposals
of what could be
I am here and now
inviting you in
to the vision of this gathering
of leaves on a tree
of trees grouped together
of commonality
of commitment
of community
Love,
A forest of We

See-Seeking

Seeing-seeking”

A conjured space
Evident connection
The edge, the line between
Nature and man-made
The neighborhood of life
Seen and unseen
We look between the shadows
And find light. 

more Walking Poems

Why is the Green Heron red?

There could be an answer but I like the question better

Do the geese always start talking and squawking before they fly?

They do this effortlessly, fly, in tandem

What names for things of beauty!

Watch them next time…let me know

The happiness of the trees goes deep into their roots

The smell of earth-mud rises

Thunder laughs and we delight

Delicious rain encompasses us

All life joins in this moment of natural joy and release

The poetics of water

Life blood so real

Falling upon us, seeping into our roots as well

Walking Poems, through the seasons 2021

I love the pink and blue stripes of early evening sky!

The winter glows and blushes its way further into magenta

The cold branches cackle and crack

As the white mink stoles of snow wrap them.

A gentle quiet envelopes the house

Piano keys sound in the distance

The deep gray silhouettes of rooftops remind me

of northern towns in Germany

As the sun sets and seals the deal on the day

These trees

like yogi trees

Stretch and sigh and creak

Moving across the sky, catching up to Spring

Deer Music and Bread

My rickety knees join the rattle
As the wind trips through winter’s branches
I hear the chimes of urban life, further away and
as the path curves through the woods,
the church bell, the cars’ horns, the noisy shutter and loud sigh of a bus
Rounding a corner
Up ahead, the deer quietly crunch as they appear
On my path in the snow
It’s the three fawns, almost grown
I love their innocent wildness, their thick winter coat, their Doe eyes
So unperturbed in this deep winter dream.

I made a successful Dutch Oven bread, very holy :)

Cheese and chutney loaf and a walk in nature?

Scribbled on a scrap of paper I find:

Dried fruit 3/4 cup
Minced ginger 1Tbl
cloves 10
Frozen Cherries 2 cups"
Chopped & peeled apple 1 cup
Red onion, minced
Cinnamon sticks 2
Mix sugar & hone (or light brown sugar) 1 cup
Cider vinegar 1 cup

Cook til liquid is almost gone then cool and refridgerate

That’s the chutney

Blend (food process) cream cheese and choice of cheese. I chose white cheddar. About 1/2 and 1/2 but you can play around with it.

Shape into loaf, refrgerate. Then slather chutney on top

Chopped raw scallions on top add a nice dimension

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Windy days are a retreat from stillness…

Bigs & Littles & inbetweens

27
I am here with it all
Beauty warmed by the sun
The faint aromas of many lives
intermingled
Like a delicious bakery
Like bodies after sex
Like past and future stories
Fiction or not
There is a vastness and a littleness
A Petrie dish and a universe
Boiling air and bubbles alive with matter
All sorts of life and
One spirit that can elude us
If we wish…

29
Can you die being swollen with life?
Is the here-after filled with color and black & white?
Have I trod carefully enough?
Too carefully?
Does the Willow speak or sing?
Is the wind it’s melody?

If we were giants
We would walk here with impunity
The tall Oak would be a twig
The vibrant small world occupied
By interesting creatures
So delicate and vulnerable
So many!
There might not be a distinction between
A human, a deer, a bug
Ah, miniscule life!

Citrus and Waves...not in order

There was a wave on the ocean. Far out, a small, struggling wave. It sensed a deep rhythm beneath it but didn’t know what to do. It cried, its tears were salty and copious. The wave lingered and moved to where the Sun was always shining. The little Wave did not really like the dark. So much dark up above even with the twinkling stars. So much dark below filled with mysterious movement and longings.

As the Wave progressed, she grew. She circled the globe once, then twice. She whispered farewell to her family of waves. As life took shape and form and gathered the different components of wave and mass and length together.

She filled many cups, many times over. She roused the sleeping people on the shorelines. She hummed quietly around the ever moving sharks. She was mystified by jelly fish and pink skin and mirages on the sea..

She rumbled and roved and delicately planted her riders where she thought they wanted to be …consumed and toppled by the great wave that was she.

She created enormous tunnels of her rolling waters, to surprise and delight. She banished hesitancy and rewarded risk. She claimed man and beast into her watery deep. But tenderly let them rest within her and sleep. Her waters calmed and surged. She never reminisced because in her Andalusian heart she knew a timelessness.

Creme Fraiche salad dressing

1 c. creme fraiche*
1 lemon skin chopped fine
1/2 lemon, juiced
2-3 Tb fresh oregano, chopped
2-3 Tb fresh dill, chopped
1-2 tsp anchovy paste
1-2 tsp Dijon mustard
1-2 tsp Chives, chopped
Salt & Pepper to taste

* creme fraiche: 1/2 heavy cream, 1/2 whole milk buttermilk. Set out in glass jar with lid, 48 hours. Refrigerate after

Playing with words

I am playing with words, I am reaping what I sow

as the delicate crickets sing their morning song

like a pre-recorded message from long ago.

A comfy gray sky hangs over us today, its aura casts

a different shade of green on the Maples’ leaves.

Swirling in and out and around their dense

presence I spy branches of dark umber in their midst

I spy the robin and the sparrow in their leafy canyons

A meadow is a lake is a prairie is an ocean

As we sit calmly on the coast, on the shore, at the

outside edge of tumult or tranquility, looking in…

Ruminations & recipes (we all need to eat)

Salami pizza
Prep: 1 1 ½ hours Cook:  45 minutes Serves 2-4 people

Ingredients Dough & Pizza:

1 ball dough (8-9oz), 4 C. All purpose organic, unbleached flour, ½ tsp Instant yeast,1 tsp Salt, 2C. Water
Mix, knead, rise (1-1 1/2 hours) 

-¼  C. Virgin Olive oil, 4  oz. Salami & Sopressata, sliced thin, 8 slices (8 oz)whole milk mozzarella, 1 medium shallot, sliced thin, 1 tsp fennel or anise seeds, crushed, ½  C. Parmesan or Romano cheese, shredded, ½-1 C. prepared pizza sauce or marinara, Kosher salt, fresh baby greens (radish tops too) or herb leaves

1 flat pan or cooking sheet.  Depending on thickness of dough, makes one 10”x12” pizza

Preparation (preheat oven to 450 degrees)

1. Spread ⅛ C. or less Olive oil on pan

2. Gently push dough into the shape, size you’d like (approx. 10”x12”) in pan

3. Spread pizza sauce on dough

4. Place sliced mozzarella on sauce

5. Spread salami & sopressata on top of cheese, place sliced shallot on top

6. Sprinkle with crushed fennel seeds and parmesan cheese.

7. Bake for 25 mins.  Should be very golden/brown and bottom crispy.

8. Sprinkle with Kosher salt and greens. Drizzle remaining olive oil on top

Walking Poem #9

The trees that bow before this last great swell

The air and land that meet

Green clouds that are leaves

Overlook this muddy trough

A pond? A puddle? A rebuke?

A Great Green Heron sits in the middle

Either on a ridge or the water is not deep

She looks directly at me, stares me down

Then turns away, leaning beak first, into the summer smells

She reminds me of the slow approach of an alligator… with wings

Her prey is there

She swallows in anticipation

Where and What

Turn the page. All the pages.
Light a fire. Rethink compensation.
Sing along with Life.
Get a helping hand, give a helping hand.
Remember solitude and solace. Keep calm, all prisoners walk free.

Dance alone or with others. Keep moving your body.
Remember love in the bones, your bones.
Good morning and good evening. Spend all that time dreaming today.
No need to speak. No need to feel like a wild beast.
More gentleness to all, to self.
Thank you, please, appreciate.
Make a sample. Test it, taste it. Adjust, go for it.

Regret nothing, simply pour your memories down the drain.
Like a deep, deep well, they sink through the earthen walls and seep
Into the whole of the earth
They are there but gone.
They support you but tie you down, tether you.
Be like a plant that uses the nutrition from the earth
But always looks up to the sky for sun and rain.
Stay softly in Nature.
Communicate gently.
Fill with wonder.
See the future
Use your imagination.

Heat & Life

walking poem #8 (Heat & Life)

The chimera of a deer’s ears
Twitching
The shapes of things in nature
Created again and again
Human’s interpretations
Chimeras themselves, if we admit it
Searching on a path
In and out of shade and shadow
What difference lies there?
Humble thoughts
The globe turns
We live below the winds for now
Steady in the heat of life.

“Tuscan” Ribs : slow cooked on a grill, difficult but did it with help
Marinate: Fresh sage, rosemary, thyme, smoked paprika, lots of salt, black pepper, 1/4 C Olive oil. Rub ribs.
Glaze: 1/2 C White balsamic vinegar (add grape juice if too harsh) 4-6 crushed garlic cloves

Leftovers are excellent cold but I think I’ll make a salad with them. I served the ribs with corn pancakes and rice.

Shrimp and safety

We obscure ourselves
and call it righteous
We try to remain safe,
take no risks,
push that to the nth degree
And in the end risk it all.
Safety never wins

Shrimp Cascade

1 lb. raw shrimp, shelled & save shells (13-15 ct)
3 C. Chicken stock, simmer shells in stock with garlic, Bay seasoning, Bay leaf, Cilantro (a lot), salt & white pepper, lemon juice & champagne vinegar
2 C. raw rice. Cook & use hot or cold
Strain shells out of stock and add shrimp. Cook til pink, 3-5 mins.
Serves 2-4, broth and shrimp over rice