Poem: The House Stands

The House Stands

The house stands,
listing to one side,
stripped of paint
by time and weather,
victim
of floods and neglect,
windows broken and boarded.

Vines grow through the doorway,
twisting outside, snake like,
then climbing
up trees,
whose dark roots rise
thick and powerful, grasping
towards the foundation.

The walls cry a song
not of death,
but of reminder -
"Here once was life.
Lovers danced on my floors
and children laughed
as they ran down stairs
to play

in the same river
that rose against me
in times of storm."

The grey walls croon.
" Do not cry for me,
for as long as I stand,
there is hope
of redemption."

The house stands.

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Last night, when Drewry and I went to First Fridays at the Pember, a local arts event in nearlby Granville, NY, we also walked to the Slate Museum, where there was more art on display, and I saw this house, perched on the riverside. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: Preparation

Preparation

The plaster buckles, separated

from the lathe underneath, anything

but perfect. Holes pock the wall

like acne scars.

It is time to paint, but

the real work is not the painting,

but the tearing out,

the filling in, building

a foundation strong

and smooth, more work

than mere brushing, but

without it the paint

is worthless. 

================

The picture looks like a piece of modern art, but it is of a basement wall, damaged by water. 

Tom 

Thoughts: The Guitar in the Corner

Everything has a lesson, if we are open to it.

Today I cleaned house. It is snowing outside, and Rona is working. A good day for the normally mindless task of housekeeping. Haul a load to the dump. Check. Wash an absurd number of dishes. Check. Clean the counter, disperse the pile on the kitchen table, sweep. Check. Scrub a bathroom, sift through the piles around my desk, file in preparation for tax time in a week or two. Check. Clean the living room. Done. On the dining room.

Uh Oh.

The dining room isn't used a lot, so normally there is not much to do. But there in the corner was the guitar.

My mom gave me the guitar last Christmas. She bought it when she took a guitar class a couple of years ago, but it was too large for her, so she passed it on to me. It's a lovely thing, made of spruce in Quebec with a rich tone.

 It's not my first guitar. I was given one of those cheap guitars that you give a budding teenager when they show a passing fancy to play. Cheap because why invest a lot of money in something when teenagers are notoriously famous for changing their mind again and again. I carried that guitar around with me for thirty five years or more, and never learned to play. Finally I gave it away. it had become something of a symbol of unfulfilled dreams. I actually felt relief when it was gone, my failure would no longer stand in the corner, constantly reminding me that I had never even given it a fair chance.

And now it's back, sitting in the corner of my dining room. It's been there a year or so. But today, instead of moving on with my cleaning, I pulled it out. I had bought a beginners DVD to play the guitar and I've pulled it out too. Today, or tomorrow, I will begin to learn the guitar. I may be 56, and I may never become Mark Knopfler, but I can learn something.

Then I moved to the second office. Where my kids often did homework or hooked their computers to a printer. It got me thinking. or maybe the guitar in the corner got me thinking.

I used to draw. I loved it. I have a great little plantation table that I bought to draw on. As I got settled here, I moved it to a little room upstairs, thinking to myself that maybe I would draw more. But the room is small and dark and shared with my dresser. I never did it. The drawing table is dusty and unused. I had never thought of it until the last week or two. What changed the last week or two? I began to take art classes.

Actually, Rona began to take art classes and I have been piggybacking with her when I am in town. We learn in an art gallery in Salem, NY, just a town away from here. It's a bright airy place with great light. I have absolutely enjoyed every minute. It's time with Rona, time to play with art the same way you do when you are a kid, with no pressure, and I have found that the light room made me want to do more. So now, probably later this afternoon, I will re-arrange furniture and move my heavy oak roll top desk upstairs, and my plantation table downstairs to a room with great light that I have been mostly wasting. I doubt I would have thought of it without trying the art class. But I am excited, because I think it will make a difference in terms of my drawing more, and in terms of the room actually being used more.

This is a pattern in my life right now. I am in Vermont where I have come back to a woman I loved 30 some odd years ago, and with whom I have a second chance.  Because of being laid off several months ago, I have fallen into doing freelance work that is largely built around writing and photography, a second chance I didn't ask for, but was given. That seems to be a theme in my life - second chances. A life that is new, and familiar at the same time.

I have a quote on my desk by George Eliot - "It is never too late to become who you might have been."

So true. So true.

Tom

Poem: The Utter Uselessness of Facts

The Utter Uselessness of Facts

I can remember the facts too clearly,
the quiet afterwards, after
the truth had been spoken
and settled over the room
like death, like a plaque of silent locusts
pausing before the feast,
my heart still, not beating, afraid
to break the silence, afraid
that continuing it's metronomic dance
would give the truth shape, and presence and power, sure
that speaking would dress it in mourning
and parade it around like a manic wrath.

And so, time stopped.
Life stopped.
Love stopped, and

truth, rearranging itself like clouds
on a March wind,
shape shifting with each new word,
each new revelation,
leaving you not bitter,
but breathless
at the utter uselessness of facts.

==============================

The picture is of the window in my kitchen, which somehow made me think of Emily Dickinson. You can click on it for a larger version.

Tom

Poem: The Leaves Change

The Leaves Change

The leaves change
as weather turns cold,
as autumn winds
bearing the smell of wood stoves
and decay,
swirl and dance their macabre minuet.

The leaves change,
a beautiful dying,
each day brighter, more vibrant
until autumn winds,
howling with winterous venom
rip the color away.

The leaves change,
a preparation, not for death,
but transformation
that laughs at death,
at winter,


certain
of spring.


=========================

The picture was taken some time ago, right near the border of Rupert and Pawlet, Vermont. You can click on it for a larger version. That's my faithful Isuzu Trooper far in the background, the perfect vehicle for a photographer - all toughness and glass.

Tom

Poem: Matthew 12:20

Matthew 12:20

You dig in the garden.
The earth, wet from the night's rain,
falls apart in your hand,
dark and rich, full or promise.

You plant the small sprig
you have nursed for a season,
patiently waiting, waiting
for the first roots to reach out,
unreasonably

in water, waiting for life to spring
from this broken limb
of a flower once loved
until storms ripped it from it's source,
and left it broken on the grass,
debris,
waiting to die.

But it did not die. Not quite.
And you are here, returning it to the earth,
it's water fed roots hungry
for earth,
for nourishment,
for deeper life

as you set it gently down,
to begin
again.

=====================

Matthew 12:20 begins: "A bruised reed he will not break,  and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out....."

The photograph was taken in my back yard a couple of years ago. You can click on it for a larger version.


Tom