It's just Spring

The quiet of the naked trees release

The spores of pity. Chevrons, white and red,

From blackbirds flash. Mechanicals are still.

Ascending from a silent fairy land

Life groans, gripped by winter that has overstayed

It’s times. The ceanothus pushes out

Against a past where Arthur and Sir Gawain

Are holding still beneath the meadow oaks—

Burnt alarums shutter thought and time

Is needed to release the anger, pain

While redbuds, dogwoods struggle for the sun.

Wait, oppressive, suffocates the hope

That struggles trapped beneath a shattered land.

2008 Tour dei Simola

16" x 20" oil on canvas

Walter and Griselda

5" x 7" linocut on Somerset paper with black Graphic Chemical ink.

In the Punjab at the Zoo

The Punjab of the Zoo

In the Punjab grey-haired tigers roar unheard

And elephants are swinging by their tales.

“Remember when the coronets were herding

Sharps and Flats into the water hole

Where they attacked the muddy, clashing teeth?”

Ponderously pound, pound the words themselves

To mash, mush for toothless minds to trumpet

Thoughtless crumpets, crippled by design—

Staggering around with thoughtless minds maimed

By alcohol and academic”

“Stop!

“Butterflies are feeding. Floating danger’s

sucking out the meaning, understanding, myth.”

Philofiles, sophistry, delightful obfuscations

Coruscate, reverberate, reverberate, re . . . .

The Woodcarver

5” x 5” print carved from cherry wood and printed on Somerset paper with Graphic Chemical Intense Black ink.

It seems to me a carver’s hands and tools work independently of the wood carver's brain. I wanted this print to express this feeling by only suggesting a face emerging out of the wood the carver is working on.

Helen of Troy

This is my first cherry wood block. It is 5" x 7".



The print is on Somerset paper with vine black Graphic Chemical ink.

The real causative factors of the Trojan War are now forgotten and meaningless to us. And while Helen may not have been the real reason the Greeks launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium, she is the reason that remains. Achilles is dead, Hector all but forgotten, and Odysseus is a myth who wanders foot-sore and alone through unknown countries with hope abandoned that someone will mistake his oar for a winnowing fan and he can finally find peace. Helen has been blamed, castigated, treated as if she were no better than prostitute; and in spite of everything, for more than three-thousand years, the daughter of Zeus remains towering over the Trojan War. Shakespeare could have been speaking of her instead of Cleopatra when he wrote:

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety; other women cloy

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry

Where most she satisfies; for vilest things

Become themselves in her, that holy priests

Bless her when she is riggish.

Desdemona and the Bull

— Piedmont Literary Review and In Raspberry Gulch

And is it any wonder that I think

about the problem, that I think about

the pattern? Your denial is an ink

blot that has stained my soul and still you flout

your honesty before me like a cape

before a bull. Am I suppose to stand

and simply watch you, simply stand and gape

in stupefaction while the sword is fanned

in front of me? You over estimate

the bull's stupidity and pain, my dear,

when you rely upon your guesstimate

that I can do no harm. Before you steer

me to destruction, pause a moment. I

might swerve and follow you before I die.

Rosalind

8" x 10" oil on canvas

Rosalind — Coffeehouse Poets Quarterly

Her soiled satin pumps are out of place,

transparent images in window glass.

She moves along the rain-washed concrete walk

and gently twirls her single gillyflower.

She's Rosalind. Carnations are for other

days and times. The paper banners screaming

"SALE! MARKDOWNS UP TO 35%!"

the clothes, the jewelry carefully arranged

on hairless, alabaster mannequins,

the New York style deli (neon, pink

and purple spelling intermittently

PASTRAMI), Canon's auto-everything,

Danielle Steele, all are disregarded as

she smells her flower absent-mindedly

and softly uses it to stroke her neck.

What is Spring

4 1/2 x 7 3/4
Oil on canvas

What Is Spring?

after a short story by Janise Peoples

The afternoon was calm as Mama rocked

the porch swing. Jessie sat beside her. "What

is Spring?" he asked. "The teacher wants to know.

She said to write a poem, Mama, and

to tell her." Mama pointed to the yard

where zinnias were growing at the fence.

"It isn't only flowers. Spring is all

about the future. Most of all, it's life.

She took him to the road and pulled a leaf

of pig weed. "Amaranthus. We could have

the leaves for dinner. Later we could eat

the seeds. The Aztecs built a nation from

this weed along with corn and beans. She showed

how cranes bill stretched its neck and had him smell

the lupine. "Bees will spin the finest gold

from that." she said. "Your daddy, in the fall,

will harvest just a little bit for us

to dribble on our corn bread but he'll leave

the bees the rest to see them through the cold."

A dappled amber sunlight filled the yard.

"Just tell her, Jessie, you are Spring." She kissed

his head. "It's time for dinner. Come and help."

Trader Dan

4" x 6" Linocut on Somerset paper
with Graphic Chemical vine-black ink.

His father took a day from selling cars

to take him to an antique car museum

in Cucamonga. Riding down the road,

the two of them together, all alone,

the boy remembered something he had heard

about a Cucamonga berry but

the fields they passed were only growing grapes.

He turned towards his father, "Do you know

where Cucamonga berries grow? I thought

I'd see them somewhere near." His father glanced

at him then pointed at a vineyard. "That's

the only berry growing here. It looks

to me like you've a little growing up

to do. You're either stupid or naive

to fall for Cucamonga berries, son,

and either one will get you nowhere fast.

You need the brains God gave you, to survive."

He rolled the window down and cleared his throat

and spat. "A Cucamonga berry! Don't

you ever hear what people say to you?

You have to listen to them, what they say

and what they mean, and know the difference from

a lie and when they're telling you the truth."

He spat again and rolled the window up.