My Wife the Artist

Stained Glass Window by The Vinery Glass Studio

 

stained glass gardens

humiliate real flowers

prismatic pieces

split rays of the sun

into factions of color

spears of morning who

penetrate petals

light bursting in blooms

upon patterns of

soldered seam joinery

lifting the life through

each intimate window

each mouth-blown

and delicate glazing

to place its artisanal

kisses on eyelids

who quiver awake

ever grateful for love

in the form of esthetic

affectionate gifts from

the generous capable

hands of a craftswoman

conqueror partner

whose heart captured

mine half a century

since and still now

more than ever her

tending and tenderness

making the all of my days

stained glass gardens

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Aubergine Eyes

Image From Pinterest

 

liquid mysteries

like nights in Icosium

savory perils

 

 

From my books Range of Motion and Riverthink

Spectrum of Debt

“Color Spectrum” by Peter Dranitsin

 

You soar in sadistic circles.

That ridiculous tail

drops from out of the blue

like a hangman’s rope from an unseen scaffold.

Its scaly black tip

traces unctuous curves

on the ground

round a gob-smacked towhead

you caught upside down

in your rivet-hot eyes.

Why punish a naïf whose

pink innocence

ought to be penance enough?

Why did you choose

to abuse him? Why set about

squeezing out humors,

in gleeful violet spurts,

from the hominy husk

of his purpling thorax?

Your jaundiced

anaconda fingers

put the devil’s red smear to bruised parchments.

They iterate vig on each wager,

noting gray small-print terms

and the succulent tangerine odds for each

seductive indulgence

borrowed

from white clapboard

jungles.

There is where brick branches burn

dull clay flambeaux

upon neat little termite mound hearths,

casting barely ambient

light on your motives.

Why so important, in other words costly,

to lift up their lavender smoke,

goading ultradian rhythms,

to your haughty flared nostrils

staring down

on pathetic

but oh so normal

subsistent grass green

desires?

 

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

 

Éire

“Quaint Cottage” by Tanya Bond

 

undulating hills
paint uneasy centuries
forty shades of green

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Aubergine Eyes

“Purple Eye” by Joel Wright

savory perils
like nights in Icosium
liquid mysteries

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Colorless

 

“Man in Black Hat” by David Flam

 

 

any white shirt would do
for a black and white stageplay
as long as I got to recite
my lines wearing my old
soft black cowboy hat
crown-pinched and brim-rolled
like pages of scripts my gray
fingers would worry
again and again line-by-line
word-for-word all to memorize
life in the hope that some
slightest applause
might redeem the dull effort

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)

Succession

“Abandoned Yellow House” photo by Madden Vallis

old things die amid new

a fleeting duet

color comes of a season

vibrant yellow

on loan from the sun

life and death

in the tint of their turns

each a gift

in its own right of moment

small piece

of that generous arc

that defines

the invisible motion of time

Feeling Art

 

“Purple Moonlight” by Sneddonia

 

 

which colors obtain
grueling portraitures of pain
black on purple serves
agonized canvasses well
slashing eyes with sharp edges

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)

Matters of Faith

“Waterloo Bridge – Sunlight in the Fog” by Claude Monet

 

fog sits on my eyes
it obliterates truth
every place I can look
a miasma of gray
hides the blue of the sky
and the green of the sea
but I know they are there
the blue and the green
and the knowing makes
all of the difference

(originally posted December 2013)

Firetime

 

Photo by Forest Wander

 

flames of fall

infill evergreen spaces

New England on fire