Painting up on the hill:
Tomorrow I start a short online course about using sketchbooks so these warranted another look at in the last tour of Drawn from Greatness. Degas and Cezanne! There was also a sketchbook (noted that it appeared to have been used as a phone message book…) used by Jackson Pollack. No photos allowed of that one.
Letter from V.
Another letter from V.
He’s out and about in the town
And sends a drawing of the bridge
Describing the jay blue sky
Arcing above the locals
passing in their work
Ignorant of the red
And gold and greens
That lay, a treasure,
All around them.
The sepia words are so small.
They spill down the page
Flowing with the river
Toward the sea.
Went to the Clark for a little plein air time and to see the last day of the Drawn to Greatness exhibit. Sat up on the hill under a cloudless sky. It was pleasant in just a sweater and a vest but a few times I held onto things due to wind.
Although the day started out all about the birds and hill, inside I visited my favorites from the exhibit and did a little people watching. Last days of exhibits bring out interesting folks looking at stuff!
I love to sign my name. I’m in awe of how popular authors manage to sign many thousands of books. Surely you practiced signing your name at some point in your life. I did!
There on the floor,
the unexpected.
Finding a cat’s whisker
is a rare event
despite the multiple
cats and their
multitudinous whiskers.
They seem unusually shed
but it must happen like
any hair, certainly more
often than say the kitten’s
teeth, which I’ve never
found a single one after
generations of kittens
grown to cats
and gone now beyond.
Today, a single fine
black whisker which
must be Molly’s,
the singularly black
matriarch of my three.
She shows no interest
when shown this treasure.
The kittens, lighter tabbies,
show no concern at all.
It will be lying on the table
when I return tonight
and I’ll consider its fineness
again and consider all it has
encountered and think of the
collection I’d have if I’d saved
all the whiskers I’d found
over all the years and cats
But I don’t save them,
anymore than I save the
first green grass of spring
or those first sour apple
starts of summer.
This morning before work I headed out, hoping to do a little painting before work. And I did. But there was this glaring bright thing up in the sky that hurt my eyes! Sun? What’s that? I don’t remember…
A long grey sad
glowy at the edges
it comes over
the last hill of winter
in February a day
warm enough to melt the walks
is welcomed gladly
in April it had better be warm
it had better not bring snow
Surly? perhaps. Winter is
a string of many days and
furnace-driving nights
As much as you can revel
in the icy challenge of it
eventually it has to go.
The birds have returned,
the daffodils are waiting
and well, we’re all waiting
for that clear day
that turn of air
the softening of the tree line
bursting with maple red
and willow gold
and spring.
If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
