I don’t know how it is for others, but for me, I invested a lot of my sense of self into my childhood home. “The Ranch” (it was actually only a few acres) as we affectionately call it, had been in the family for 150 years. It was sold in 2018 as my stepdad grew more frail, and I processed some of that experience through painting (which you can read about in this post). I daydreamed as a kid about living there as an adult, and how I might change certain details and shepherd the land, but of course I left home as most young adults do… and for a host of reasons (work, love, ambition) I never moved back. It can take a long time to recognize that we’ve already let something go— old dreams of ourselves, different visions of how things might’ve worked out, pleasures and relationships we thought would continue but which we discarded or grew out of, like a seed from a husk— and then, later, we unexpectedly have to come into accord with ourselves.

I still write poetry just like when I shared my book about my dad’s passing, although I don’t always share it here on the blog. I often think that it would be lovely to team some sort of painting up with this or that poem, but those aren’t things you can force. Things arrive when it’s their time to. And you’ll see as much if you look over the poems and paintings below. Some of these poems were written almost 20 years ago, others 10, others last year; some paintings are recent, some older. But slowly relationships coalesce.

Stil, for sure, as I approach the final 100th painting in my ongoing challenge, the process of painting daily and just exploring subject matter and being open to failure has continued to pay dividends. These are subjects I’ve wanted to paint for a few years now, but I think the fear of failure really held me back. The format- these little 8x8 pieces, painted in private- was very liberating for me. Will I take these pieces further and repaint them? Maybe. But for now, they are what they are. I’ve teamed them up with a some of the paintings I did when we sold the ranch. I suspect long time readers of the blog will recognize those pieces in their new context.

Keepsakes

We had been packing. It was the last of it, and I felt a need
to give the house a solemn walk through.
I sank through the rooms the way a bit of wood,
                                                                              too heavy
            but still uncertain,
begins its tentative journey to the bottom of a pond—
            first in the kitchen,
                        with the window in the door to look down the shaded driveway,
                        and the bit of painted tin
                        nailed to a corner of the ceiling, to cover the hole
                        for a wood stove I’d never known,
            through the empty living room,
                        where we had lay in front of the potbellied stove,
                        to watch sparks crack in winter,
            down the hall,
                        where there were no longer pictures,
            past the bedroom,
                        where there was no longer a bed,
            down the stairs to the closet without linens, and the bathroom with a waste basket, either
                        forgotten or too unimportant to be taken—
until I arrived
at the bottom bedroom.
There was some hubbub up top, but here it was quiet, or quiet enough.

The room was empty,
except for a patch of light
and motes
I suppose I must have stirred up on my entrance,
            that glistened as they passed through the blade of honey,
            before returning to shadow.
I scanned the silence,
            the brown carpet, the plastic pull-down drapes with a woven texture,
            that were difficult to open only part way,
            and the paneling
            salvaged from the old barn,
            that I found somehow both ugly
            and beloved,
            so full of a care I could not deny, so chosen
            that they had long become beautiful to me,
            and which I recognized
                                                   then
            that I would not be seeing again,
when I remembered— I had seen it from the outside,
            while walking the property that morning,
and then forgotten it—
            a mason jar, left behind on a windowsill behind a drape,
            with a crystal for making rainbows in it, a seashell not
                        from a memory of my own,
            and a dark, blacksmithed nail, also from the old barn.
Should I have known these things inside?
It seemed so to me, as I held it
and they rattled inside,

but I didn’t.
Why were they together?
I had not kept them in the jar as keepsakes, to be forgotten, nor gathered them there
in a fit of cleaning for my mom, nor hidden them
                                                                                 to keep them safe,
though they were now
keepsakes,
now hidden,

now safe,
now gathered together.

3.20.21, 7.11.21

Ghost

I don’t know why I went back, but I did.
The paint was peeling off the white walls.
They hadn’t kept up with things,
but the trees were still there, stronger than memory.
I was hunting, maybe, hoping to see… I don’t know,
that my past
still lingered there?
            As I myself could not.
That memories, specific,
            and unknown to anyone but myself,
            of myself as the shepherd of this land,
            as an animal, as a lover, or a son,
had bled like a holy stain, accidental
            but true,
            into the soil, so that
somehow,
against all logic, and reverence, and honest feeling,
it would become true that
the land loved me as much as I loved it,
that it was not
just the scent of resin
dripping from these pines that had sanctified the land, nor the
            holding of an old fig
            where the light fell through the skin of leaves to fall on my own,
nor even
the wind on my forehead
that made this place holy,
but rather, or also,
that it had been my reception
            of the blessings
that remained, that gave it that special kiss.
That my joys could be there too, perhaps,
for others to discover
amongst the bark scattered under the cedar, and the old quartz stones
            that lined the long,
            shaded driveway.

3.19.21

Without a Mirror the Honeyed Grass

Waking in the dark, in my bed—
Pure, simply itself,
without a mirror honeyed grass ebbs on the hillside.
I shall walk in it. I shall lay on my back in it.
Body of dry grass whispers on body.
I smelled the long sweet stalks.

March 03

The Coffers of the Diary of Magic

I first discovered poetry
rummaging around, hunting for secrets in the back of the pantry—

past the dusty cabinet
            where we hid the broom
            and the cans of beans whose labels the tips of bored, happenstance fingers had so
                        industriously removed,
past the vats of rice and flour
            that stood at attention outside the laundry room,
            where I unearthed a hole in the floor, boarded over with plywood,
            a porcelain sink without running water,
                        whose antique handles complained when I turned them,
            and a pink medicine cabinet
                        that had lost its face, still hanging on the wall behind the dryer,
                        through the rusted metal of which my mind would ramble,
                        unwrapping the lost histories of hairpins and sewing kits,
            where, swaddled in a humid cocoon, my heart skipping to the rhythm of the tumbling of
                        clothes infused with the scent of fresh lint,
            I gazed out over the hill
            through the window I swung on a hinge,
                                                                                                            watching clouds,
                        and their shadows
                        play on the open prayer of grass,

past the stalwart piano, long out of tune,
            the polished veneer chipping from keys
            that, played upon,
            had once called forth from the soles of our feet a nameless, ramshackle jig
                        that made us prance about inside our skin
                        like wild animals looking for a joyful way out,
past even the creepy hole in the ceiling
            that promised, if you stood on a chair, a carnival glimpse
            up onto the entombed, shingled roof
                        of the cabin our house had once been…

far back,
at the end of the room, where we let the sleeping bags hibernate
and stacked the old boxed games in a naked armoire.
There I sited the dumbbells I had used
            to be the strongman in the circus.
Drawn to them, I inspected the shelves and piles—
and the cracked porcelain knick-knacks, maimed in battle, missing a foot or an ear,
the incomplete set of encyclopedias, still in order,
            which would never teach me the details of the fall of Thebes,
the forgotten tools,
and the small bottles without a home
            that stood in rows like grimy urchins from a Dickens novel—
they all sang like jewels
as I mined them in the half-light.

On cobwebs
draped across warped panes of window,
sunlight clung,
waiting for a breeze that would not come.
There I found a book.
Like drawing water, I pulled it from the well,
and snuggled in a corner, unable to be found,
I wrapped myself in the must of old pages. The silent luster of metal
worn smooth
with the pallid thumbing of flesh was loud in my ears, and unclasping the lock
hearing again
the rattle of blind wind
spinning like a dervish on the shining tin roof,
I opened its cover
and revealed to myself
the coffers of the diary of magic.

April 23rd and 29th, 07

Poetry and Art- Departures and Returns

Comparing Squirrel Mop Brushes

The 8x8 Daily Painting Collection is Live Today!