Inspiration

I thought I'd post the inspiration for the poem From Vatnajokull to Sargasso. My friend Paul e-mailed me this picture he created, and explained it's inspiration, which is partially quoted below.



"30 years have passed since I was in the Sargasso Sea... named for the seaweed that reminded early Portuguese explorers of Salgazo grapes. I take a sip of wine. It is true that the only company I kept during my churchyard haunting was that of the local wildlife. I can remember leaning against the heavy ancient tombs, listening to the wind tickle the the long thin meadow grass; the birds sweet twittering only there to distract me from their nests.

The hawsers stretch across the deck, over windlass and into the becalmed Sargasso. They drag there until the sea unknots the tangled hemp.

I'm looking at a painting I started some years back - a Photoshop enhanced version appears above. I started a few like this. I was responding to the patterns that I saw in nature.

The bark of trees...

Lichen growing on stone...

Sand ripples left by the receding tide.

As is so often the case with this kind of doodling, I started to see half familiar shapes emerging from the squiggling foam. A creature here and there. The hint of something hidden just below the surface. A place from the past."

He also sent me links to Chris Watson's Vatnajokull and Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon. Thanks Paul, for letting me share this :]

Illustration Friday: Similar

Serenity
Poured through a sieve
Every hole similar
Nothing changes
In this room
No windows
No doors
Yet, luminescence varies in the passing
Red, yellow, green, blue
Beads in a prism
Strung on daisy chains of light
Waiting


The poem is for CPCCC's Saturday Share. The picture for Illustration Friday's Similar.

Winter Colors

Remembering when this time of year wasn't so depressing. I don't care for the poem much, but again, kind of like the picture. The poem was written for Legacy Writers of Harmony Pub picture challenge.



Twenty one years ago a church bell rang
Tolling pale azure and white
Against an iridescent midnight
Refrains of devotion, candlelight sang

Olden ritual with white rose petals misted
New birds chirp warmth into the frozen
Borrowed from time, sterling vows are spoken
Blue, truer than all ancient affections listed

For fifteen years the colors tolled
Now silent, their hues have faded
In shadows of grey, winter is shaded
Rose petals withered by the colorless cold

Reflection's Passages

I went to the arboretum yesterday, sat at my favorite spot by the cypress bog, and daydreamed about traveling into the reflections of the fall leaves.




Reflection’s Passages

Diving into reflection’s passages
I soar high above the oxbow
amber branches give way
greeting
entreating
casting amber beams of hushed petals
to the path before me
vanishing far below
where mirrors ripple
with Eleionomae sighs
displaced
Forsaken waif

Deeper into the golden embrace
I discover
the point of origin has been silenced
the bejeweled resin is no closer
the vernal vibrancy is dangling from the
thorny arm extended toward me
Exhausted

Dark Dance

Here's another one for the Saturday Share. I'm not crazy about the poem, but I think the picture turned out kind of cool. When I was layering a couple of my photos in photoshop to go along with the poem, the girl just mysteriously appeared. I airbrushed her a little to make her stand out. Originally, I had no intention to have her in there, but I guess she was determined to be a part of her own dance.




Dark Dance

Stark Cypress sway in celebration
Child of midnight spinning round
Shadows explode with symphonic elation
Lost in song on this frozen ground

Where turbulence and placidity abound
Gusts of pine needles sprinkle
Oh how mystical melodies resound
Around disembodied eyes a twinkle

Moonlit reflections wrinkle
And echo harmoniously across the bog
Sleepy curiosity rouses a jingle
Timid choir huddles under a log

Winter woodland rug rustles agog
With the dance of the dark child
She cloaks the night in frigid fog
Silhouetted hoots and howls are riled

She desires daylight to be beguiled
Breathing an elegy in anticipation
Between timbre wild and tone mild
Swirling disposition resonates sensation

Surfs Up

I've been traveling the Atlantic lately. ...In spirit, anyway. And, while journeying, I've been trying out some new forms of poetry. The first is a Villanelle.



Soul of the Sea

Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea
When operatic coral awaken under an argent moon
Bear an azure sanctuary for me

Sympathetic waves lave from Charon’s ferry
Ungodliness into the tidal hands of Neptune
Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea

Dissolving error through a rippled melody
Drifts of celestial glitter’s serous rune
Bear an azure sanctuary for me

Kraken, Leviathan form fondness for me
Where edenic reefs are hewn
Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea

Their luminosity wanes in the Atlantis of anemone
Misty chants that wisp ere shadowed dune
Bear an azure sanctuary for me

Oh that starry fluidity would serenade soon
My ashes to ebb and emancipate my boon
Oh ardent aria for the soul of the sea
Bear an azure sanctuary for me




From Vatnajokull To Sargasso

Icelandic groans of spectral profound
Ripple forth from frozen wombs
Augural creaks ominously resound
What veiled chants Vatnajokull assumes

Squiggling chimera within frothy blooms
Traversing rampart currents to where
Sargasso lichen cover sunken tombs
Crumbling reflections exhale arctic air

We’ve journeyed to where reveries dare
To tranquilize sonorous seas
We find therein knotted waters ensnare
Unattended growth the stillness seize

Swaying headstones in a liquid breeze
Lingering fingers are sifting through
Gardens of silt laden memories
Where foam apparitions stew

In mid Atlantic we rendezvous
With glacial hymns and salty wine
Hawser meshes of the afternoon
Swimming through placid brine

This last one is a Virelay. They're both dedicated to Paul, my travel companion who lives on the opposite side of the Atlantic. We meet half way ;]

The Season's Solace

Dear Mike,

Annually, I make my trek to memorialize the day I brought you home to a rocky land of cactus and Mesquite thorn. Ceremoniously, I cling to you through your family in a silence that is interrupted intermittently by the call of a wild turkey. We gather on this harsh prickly land, and I brace myself for the season’s chill. Your family comforts me, though, within this Hill Country’s beauty that you knew so intimately.

Burnt sienna and burnt umber whisper with a frigid November breath. There, vermillion dotting rolling hills against an azure sky, hushed briars nestle in for winter. A sunset highlights the spiny edges of a Prickly Pear and the golden seed heads of wild grasses. Muted beauty that you are continuously revealing to me still.

I never cared much for Fall. I never wanted Summer to end. You and I together finding so many sun bright things to do. Since your death that blindingly blank summer day, I long for Fall’s consoling blanket of solitude. I long to escape failed expectations of summer togetherness, like the way a fallen leaf is alee the cold Autumn wind. Now the quiescent place you call home mirrors my parched brittle soul that is beginning to adorn new colors of beauty you’ve yet to see.

Fitting it was then, that it was Fall when I carried you home. We spread your ashes among rock and bone under changing trees. We held each other to say good bye and remember you, but that reclusive fire that took you, laid hold of me. It’s been changing my hues to burnt earthen pigments. A newfound beauty decries the emptiness that the fire refines. Fire and ashes in my veins, but my bones are growing cold. Autumn’s beauty carries me beyond the soundless deer seeking shelter, beyond your ashes undisturbed.