Saturday, April 27, 2013

Mugu Rock







Mugu Rock, lithograph, 16 x 20"

From California:  Thoughtprints and Footprints

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

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. 

Saturday, April 6, 2013

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