Memoirous

Ghost Shadow All around us are ghosts Ethereal beings, angels That accompany us on our daily tasks And it is only sometimes When caught unawares, Between sudden shifts Of light and time, ruptures In the third and fourth dimension We are able see Evidence, footprints beside us A slight hope, an assurance We are not alone

Wake up, move these tired bones Sometimes if I have to do the same thing one more time I’ll scream, and at other times I can’t take one more new thing or I’ll explode, it is the dynamic Of life, the tension of old and new The familiar versus sudden revelation The paradox that within brilliant sunlight There is a bird shadow

Super moon in winter Looking east from the terrace Midnight blue and luminesce Powder and smoke and clouds Stirred up by the semi-frozen lake Which creates its own weather. We live in a strange and scary city Full of ghosts and the visages of Time past, full of memories Of summer, chilling on the Terrace in shorts and sandals             Watching the moon filter the sky

Black and white After parking the car On a lonely Sunday night I pause, breathe in frost and ice A single porch light Casting elongated picket shadows How can I sing, How can I write—   With all this quiet beauty

You wonder: Why am I awake at this hour? At this cold, subzero dawn. Slowly the distant stars fade, and a pale casting of light Rises between the buildings. A low hum from Lake Shore Drive plays behind hesitant birdsong. Even the sparrows are subdued, fighting against headwinds, Head colds, hungover from their desperate struggle to survive. We all have our balancing act, teetering on the brink Of a new morning.

Landscape No. 3, Cash Entry Mines, New Mexico After spending 18 months in New Mexico, Marsden Hartley returned to New York in 1919, but he continued to paint the Southwest from memory. My friend Colleen is flying today from New Mexico back to Chicago. She is an artist of the cellphone camera. In 2011 I spent a week in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico at Starry Night Artist Retreat. I returned home to continue to create from memory. Leaving one place for another doesn’t erase our longing, our desire to connect to a landscape, the people we love and miss. True art speaks to our emotions, to the sublime within us. Today it is 1 below with windchill—I reach back in my memories to the night I rode my bike down dark T or C streets to a hot spa. I eased my tired body into the natural pool and soaked in the minerals letting go of stress and self-doubt. For a little while. We all wish to return to some place safe. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/65937/landscape-no-3-cash...