If only he could paint what he feels
deep within, and not just what he sees,
his paintings would be transcendent.
But anymore, what he feels is elusive, hidden
somewhere beyond the descriptive,
beyond the stroke of his brush and the
complexities of his paint, beyond his ability
to put emotion and insight to canvas.

He's begun to question himself,
no longer the confident painter but now
far too introspective and unsure of his talent,
a talent that used to reveal itself with flare,
color and a successful style. Melancholy
has set in, frustrating any attempts
to get beyond the feeling of hopelessness.

Someone who would never equate
himself with the great painters, knowing
the limits of his own talent, he
nevertheless wonders - could this
be how Van Gogh felt in his despair?

--

The wild geese overhead
follow their instinct, know
where they came from,
know where they must go.
They follow not the errant wind
but their own natural course –
so much more real purpose
than man.

--

hospital visit . . .
the hush of snow falling
outside the window

--

old neighborhood –
even the memories
have moved on

--

waning moon —
the cricket's chirp
in a spider web

--

morning wind . . .
my sports pages delivered
to the neighbor

.

out of shadow —
an eagle's wing
touched by the sun

--

morning light
traces the frosted trees –
winter's brush

.

Tall prairie grass, wind-swept and
burnished gold, whispers with the
long-dead voices of all who passed
on this trail in their dream voyage
to Oregon, or California, or who
died, disease-ridden, exhausted, to be
buried just off the rutted trail
under a lonely stretch of sod
or cairned atop a barren lava bed.

A bone-white wagon tongue,
its carriage long ago disintegrated
and fallen into splintery planks,
laps thirstily at the dry sod along the
edge of the trail, finding only
parched earth and no water, burrs
and beetles instead of hydration.
More prairie than desert but still
more a place to leave behind, only
insects, lizards, hawks and the curious
chickadees seem to make it home,
this dusty stretch of history.

Hawks hover, then spiral effortless
high above, as they did so many years
ago, dark against a soft patchwork
of azure blue sky and creeping clouds.
The occasional click of grasshoppers
is barely audible in the billowing prairie
grass shaken by the incessant wind.
Dry bones of beasts and luckless humans
hug the edges of the trail, mute testimony
to the brutality of the westward rush
and the following of the Oregon Trail.

--

The old farmer hung back,
as rickety and battered as the
‘50s Allis-Chalmers tractor upon

which he leaned, hunched,
clung, as if the auctioneer's words
and the wind might carry him off

like the implements he'd treasured
much of his life, machines with
which he had toiled and sweated

and which had helped him chisel
out a meager existence in his
40 years on the farm. His wife was

dead now, his children scattered
like the clucking chickens and hissing
geese, all he had left were memories

and the old homestead, and it was
leaving him bit by bit on the backs
of creaking pickups and low boys

and stuffed into the cavities of shiny
new Cadillacs and Buicks. The cruel
wind had driven in from the southwest,

stealing a little more topsoil from the
threadbare farm, swirling and *******
at tattered curtains still hanging in

the mouths of grimy windows left ajar.
With each piece of his life leaving
down that gravel road, a draining

of his dreams and energies followed.
A few more raps of the gavel and he
too would be as dust in the wind.

--

frigid wind –
a snowdrift and the dogs
at the back door

--

winter painting –
mostly grays
on my palette

--

warm spell . . .
the snowman leans
into the sun

--

icy wind —
the dead spider
spins in its web

.