Mugu Rock

Mugu Rock, lithograph, 16 x 20"

From California:  Thoughtprints and Footprints

The Pebbled Path to Rocky Nook

 

The Pebbled Path to Rocky Nook, lithograph 16 x 12"


We used to live above the Mission in Santa Barbara in the original stream bed of Mission Creek.  The stream had been diverted by the Spanish monks to irrigate their olive orchards.  This old sandstone boulder sat right outside my studio window with sycamore trees growing around it.  It had come to rest there in a prehistoric flood.  This litho was one of a suite of fourteen prints I did after I moved to Virginia, "California:  Thoughtprints and Footprints."   The new stream bed ran along the southern border of Rocky Nook Park and we used to take the cats for walks there.  They loved to wade in the fast moving water. 

Mourning Dove Comments on the Changing Light (from the journal)

Blue is what the

brown winter

dreams of.  3-2-13

Vibrating left and right,

the cold winter light.  3-4-13

Daffodil’s yellow winter dreams

are climbing up the cold winter air

one green leaf at a time.  3-4-13

Pressing up the earthen umbrella,

green fingers its way through.  3-6-13

Tree-hugging snow rounds

the tall woods one trunk

at a time.  3-6-13

Catching the wind,

catching the light,

this tiny shrub’s

new green buds

lean over thin snow.  3-7-13

One, just one,

one poem to go with March’s

soft breath, bright light, dancing wind.  3-9-13

The diagonal sweep of trees.

The sun drew it up one

cell at a time.  3-13-13

Light pours sideways over the paper,

skips over yesterday’s thoughts 
lightly embossed in gray.  3-14-13

Our golden sunrise

keeps rising,

color coming down.  3-14-13

Mourning dove

comments on the changing light,

the new colors.  3-16-13

Holding winter’s snow

all the little green

leaves.  3-18-13

The particulars of troubles

lay beneath it—

the white oneness of snow.  3-18-13

Everywhere the earth

is peopling out with swollen,

rounded buds.  3-20-13

So bright the winter sun—

maple trunk provides

a finger of shaded relief

stretching from the hill

to my face.  3-20-13

From both sides of the road

the flowered maples defy

the lingering winter.  3-23-13

In the sun—the beautiful city,

the many-colored city

rising like a crystal

over the blue harbor.  3-23-13

It’s a long wait for warmth.

Daffodils wait too,

their chins down.  3-23-13

The snow has stopped,

but it drops down now,

from the trees, down in fistfuls.  3-25-13

Breaking off from the weighted holly—

clumps of the unexpected snow.  3-25-13

The white roof

is sprinkled with squirrel’s footprints

turned to shiny ice in the slanting snow.  3-25-13

Green and rust

honeysuckle leaves ignore the cold,

unfold in their own time,

under the blue sky.  3-26-13

An earlier morning.

The trees move like yesterday

in the warming wind.  3-27-13

Waiting for warmth.

The small birds are not waiting.

They speak quietly as they hurry.  3-30-13

The Road Home

A long linear desert.

Here and there a flower of words,

floating up on the updraft.  3-30-13