Hot Air Balloon

 

“Balloon Skies” by Emily Louise Heard

 

lift away from the day

rise up out of the world

upon eagle-path thermals

blue currents embraced

by persistent north wind

benign altitudes moving

to undulant timelessness

witness to histories flawed

in their passage below

the receding green ground

dissolves into itself

the eyes fill the brain

with impressions of

pastoral landscapes

ill-lit panoramas of

primitive verdant geometry

drawn by rude hands

human husbands of nature

whose imprints trace acres

between fixed horizons

their cardinal edges delimit

the mortal existence of

men with two hearts

comorbid of conduct

through war or through peace

mornings immanent laid

along linear travel of time

bring their daily surprise

never known to beforehand

which scene will prevail

on each dawning new day

whether conflict and crisis

will bloody the earth or

desist and diminish to lurk

behind vanishing points

leaving license and lease

for tranquility come to brief

moment of burgeon beneath

soft staccato expulsions

and wanderlust whoosh

of the voyager’s flame

Decemberish

 

Image From wallarthd.com

 

I miss the late sun
rods and cones
perked by sworn affidavits
of light upon broad
panoramic existence

I miss the long day
sight degraded
by limited aid of a
tingling protracted
ballet of electrons

I miss what I know
to be there in the night
or is this instead
a believing not knowing
what dawn will reveal

I miss what I see
of my context
the nearness and
distance attending
my place in creation

I miss what I learned
in my evening hammock
from edified scripture
of imminent birth
by the light of one star

I miss what I thought
I could see plain as day
before realizing nothing
is quite as it seems
till it’s seen in the dark

Objectivity

Abstract Art by Karen Bakke

a most difficult thing

to hear with the ears of another

to see with eyes of a third party mind

without filter of feeling

abandoned of biased beliefs

where ideas and opinions

can’t help but corruptly cast shadows

perhaps that is why we

so seldom appreciate truth

Small Talk

“Hidden Meaning”
Painting by Ford Smith
From marcusashley.com

much is said
by the spaces
between worthless words

lift of brow
shift of eye
belie polite speech

the articulate pause
the momentous breath
revelations of truth

Fibonacci 16 – Credulity

“Credulity”
Painting by Ellen Jantzen
From tumblr.com

stars
shine
falsely
amusing
themselves as they toy
with the credulous human mind
its belief that perception reveals reality

Kantian Aesthetics

Painting by Irving Guyer
Illustration for “Aesthetics, Immanuel Kant and Imagination”
From “Four By Three” Magazine

(Regarding the “Critique of Judgment: Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime” by Immanuel Kant)

the thing about beauty
those pleasant sensations
it stimulates differ from
how we perceive the sublime

beauty suggests maths
of harmony order
a delicate balance of
serenely fixed truths

sublime evokes wonder
a wild splendid terror
of unfixed infinity
whelming with power

each is a matter of taste
an intensely felt noumenon
lacking psychology
an exemplar of judgment

the pleasure from beauty
the pain from sublime
apprehensions attained
without cognitive reason

Vision

“Luminous Vision”
Painting by Constantin Galceava
From etsy.com

vision is not of the eyes

it assembles itself in the mind

where glaucoma can’t reach it

an unseen but seeable imagery

poets and thinkers rely on

a figurative comprehension

imaginative within realm

of the possible given belief

that all concepts are possible

sight is not insight for insight

requires understanding

beyond what mere percepts

present incompletely to senses

in habit of being misled by

the physical features defining

the world while neglecting the

rich metaphysics the aura

philosophers recognize glowing

invisibly splendid in all that exists

or might ever yet come to exist

Silence

“Zone de Silence”
Painting by Gipehel
From artmajeur.com

don’t trust in the quiet
it doesn’t exist
there is nothing of
substance to silence

a misconstrued notion
proposing a presence
of absence defined by
its very negation

the truth is that
everywhere everything
ever and always
has ambient sound

atomic and cosmic realms
ceaseless with music
organic the constant hum
moving in muscle and mind

all existence is audible
even the dead decompose
with gradations of
timbre and tone

but for imperfect ears
we would hear every
glorious noise even God’s
own encouraging voice

Episteme

“Intersubjective Epistemology”
Painting by Andrew Cambridge
From annual.cofa.unsw.edu.au

all that we know
that we think that we know
holds the most of its truth
beyond reach of our minds

all that we see
that we think that we see
hides the most of itself
beyond reach of our eyes

all is intrinsic with mystery
much more complex
than the limited powers
of human perception

the death of a rose
the mechanics of rain
the precursors to time
the stuff of a sunbeam

we have eager science
to give us its clarity
vested in certainties
few of us challenge

our philosophers
pose the right questions
which few understand
and most tend to ignore

yet we manage to function
we trust our conceptions
carry on in the artifice
bliss of our ignorance

leaving we faithful
content to be taught
by an omniscient
omnibenevolent God

Tanager

“Scarlet Tanager”
Painting by Norma Wilson
From normasdailypaintings.blogspot.com

we look at the world
but see very little
too much of existence
to hold in the eye
too crowded with details
to hold in one thought
human witness
is always impaired
our descriptions
inevitably flawed
less than whole
left with only some few
of remarkable things
who live past the moment
impressed upon memory

one tanager scarlet
amidst panoramic
green foliage
millions of leaves
in their infinite poses
and manifold shades
moved by breezes
unfelt in the act of
organic wave-particles
living their quantum
duality forested entities
fill up our vision
and yet it’s that
lone tuft of red
that momentous
frenetic red harbinger
preening its redness
the bird not the leaves
the red not the green
that will mark itself
onto the mind

we look at the world
observing its everything
flash through eternities
take in complexities
all of it all at once
happens in instants
each instant a real
unreal disparate world
of its own with its
different impression
until all the instants
add up to one
moment of sensory
occult experience
then is the tanager
rightly perceived as
the only reality
true to that moment
with everything else
in the universe
merely familiar but
uncertain background