Ugly Boys Boof

“Magpies have death rituals, mourn.”

Stones, bones, clay.

“Woodpecker , what will you find?”

“Shelter, sanctuary, you.”

“Elk says what?”

“Today, quiet.”

Chuk, woock wock awock!

Skulls, startled, frozen.

Money Smash 162

Here I saw her all humility, and its opposite,
now harsh, now soft, now pitiless, now kind:
now clothed in nobility, now in grace,
now tame, now disdainful and wild.  

So that many times, sighing within,
I said: 'Ah me, the yoke, the log, the chains,
were much sweeter than this walking free.

Petrach, Canzionere, Poems 89 and 112. Translated by A. S. Kline 
(Working)

Surge

(Working)

Wild Love Some

“Will there be turnips tonight? I like them mashed with butter.”

But they were far away.

Warmth and smoothness were closer.

Bear pricked his ears, his exhale a natural grunt, several registers lower.

Clearly a “no.”

Turned, attuned, alert. Bear was there, watchful.

Relief.

Tipsy Baby

Trundling

Bundled, stable instability

Rocking

Balance, like gyroscopic

Rolling

Way up.

Pitching and plunging

On sinews and shoulders

Over padded sure feet

Where no step is misstep

And the way is revealed

Through whisper on whisker

To burble of baby.

Not alone. 

(Working)

Working (Demonstration for A Better Way to Glaze)

Psychopomp
I rest

Not on alluvial plain.

Nor margin of high tide.

It was not ocean, that ocean who placed Mother Conch here.

It landed on the high water mark of the other two-leggeds.

Where art met artifice.

Where beauty was born.

Out of a soul surging urge to augment and arrange their world.

That was already painted by Nature’s hand.

They put their treasure in niches, deliberate.

And forgot where they came from.

I come to bring you home to ourselves.

(Working)

Mais Amor

“Let’s stop here.”

“I don’t mind, I know you. Dots and spots. We are the same,” she giggled to herself.

She touched two fingers to the bow in her hair. Two fingers to two points, and felt a little taller. Looking sideways and back.

“You match the sky even with the sun gone.” She drew a little closer and listened.

Silence. 

(Working)

Time Eats Everything

“Will there be rules?”

“There are laws.”

“What is the law?”

“Opportunity knocks, often.”

“How do you use this law?”

“We don’t. It uses us.”

“How?”

“Polar bears have no stories of the penguin that got away. We keep going.”

“Like us?”

“Exactly like us.”

(Working) 

Working (Magpie Castle)

72 Wooster

(Working drawing, partial)