After the Drive

like the stacked stone
just-right flowers
wood bowl of shells
slow-burning green wood
my niece's house
radiates more warmth
than even Christmas

Random Acts of Art

After lying on the ground, shooting this moss over and over again,

I stood, rounded the bend, and laughed.

In forty-eight hours, the single sculpture of the stealthy freshman artist has become twelve.

Such exuberance! Such joy!

Outside/In

What's outside becomes art in my mind's eye.

Stone with Crustose Lichens at Lake Cheston

                                                                                  Gustav Klimt














Wild Iris on Virginia Avenue

              Vincent Van Gogh

Sun and Stone

If I could
I would live
in a small house
with a large window
in a small room
facing a large
sandstone wall
facing west
and I would sit
in front of that window
every late afternoon
to watch
sun make magic
and I would
be happy.

Go Inside a Stone

Poet Charles Simic wrote "Stone":

Go inside a stone.
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle.
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill --
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.












Were I to enter this stone, I would whirl and eddy, soft silt loosening and lifting, shadowed by water gliders skipping above rippling circles of leaf and sky, mindless in a dream of wet weightlessness, content with my swirling sable swoops.

Warm Winter at Lake Cheston

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light.

. . . I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor . . .



Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?



[E]very leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden