Appearances

As I stood at the light at City Hall,

I observed what appeared to be

a woman,

walking her dog

on the far side of the street

along the warming, red bricks

of the Journal-World building.

Upon reflection, if appeared

that she was holding her hand

away from her body

to avoid getting cigarette smoke

on her skirt,

the dog was only

her shadow on the wall,

and the appearance of a pulling leash

merely her effort to balance

as she walked on high heels.

The woman turned and vanished,

shadow and all, down the alley.

From the silhouette of her legs

it had appeared

that she was an attractive woman.

But who am I

to judge a woman

on fleeting appearances.

As the light changed,

a shadow appeared

to help a blind man

to the other side

of the street.

This time it starts with a chicken

This morning it was reported on the radio that a boy in England had lost his chicken.

There was some twittering and retweeting in between, and then the chicken was found on the other side of the road.

So they had wrung yet more laughs out of an old joke. 

Then I started to think about the one about the chicken and the egg.

Is it the case that talented and creative people become artists? 

Or is it the case that people who do art, however fumbling, in concentrating their attention on how to share their particular truth or sense of wonder in a poem or painting or whatever, release a latent ability to become more aware of their world than non-artists, and then they find new and interesting ways to show what other people overlook simply to get their work noticed? Or merely because it’s more satisfying trying not to bore others – or themselves?

The people who do art are more likely to find something because they are looking for something. And in trying to express what they are discovering, they are forced to look ever more carefully, to analyze and evaluate what is most important in the thing they wish to portray. The more they look, the more they see, the more they see, the more they wish to share it, and the more they try to shape their medium to express their experience and ideas, the more they have to ask whether they are succeeding at their task, and the more they ask, the more they have to look again at what started it all. It’s a virtuous circle.

Perhaps, the more you try to do art, the more talent and creativity you unleash.

Chicken and egg.

Of course, as with everything else, some people are better at doing some things (that is, all the various pieces of a particular artistic process) than others. Call them good artists.

But why do some people look, and so many people overlook?

Why did that chicken cross the road?

Christmas Horse Parade

Gray branches

and a sodden sky.

Along the route

where the horses from the Christmas Parade

returned to the county fairgrounds,

I spied, near the gutter,

a child’s, bright pink, plastic clog.

The grass around it was worn out,

waiting to be tucked under a cold, white blanket.

The earlier cold rain,

not having dampened the enthusiasm

of the riders

and of the watchers

of snuffling horses,

still trickled along the curb.

The horses had faithfully done their part

to again bring us closer to Christmas

and were by now warm and dry.

And the spirit of that child

waved once more

as I turned toward home.

Turning moments into stories and stories into poetry

I justify my poems on the grounds that I am telling a story in a voice that suits my personality. If they are less vivid or oblique than many modern poems I admire, I am content to be clear, with neither more nor less word-strokes than are needed to let the reader see the essence of what I saw and feel what I felt. Sometimes I am shooting for style points. Mostly I hope to nail the substance.

Now, does this work better in this form?

I justify my poems on the grounds

that I am telling a story

in a voice that suits my personality.

If they are less vivid

or oblique

than many modern poems I admire,

I am content to be clear,

with neither more nor less word-strokes

than are needed to let the reader

see the essence of what I saw

and feel what I felt.

Sometimes I am shooting

for style points.

Mostly I hope

to nail the substance.

And then there’s the poem I would like to write, that reveals my point equally clearly without being so explicit.

You have to walk before you can run.

You have to run before you can fly.

One day.

Recollecting Faces

When I walk, I see people.

Their gait from a distance.

Their glancing look past me.

The fraction-of-a-second smile of a stranger

when sometimes our eyes meet.

In the future I will wear a camera implanted behind my left eye.

Facial recognition software will lock on to each face -

the pretty, the weathered, the happy, the disengaged.

With a blink I will register emotion, personality.

Perhaps I will capture an image of their soul.

But for now when I see people,

their faces pass by,

the toothpick in their mouth fading with each step,

the curve of their cheek blurs,

the upturned crease at the corner of an eye

is not etched, only echos, in my memory.

I do not wish to meet all the people I see,

but I would like to remember them,

and if I could, I would carry some of their passing looks

in my pocket,

and when the sidewalk emptied

I would sit on the bench by the river

and thumb through the pictures of the lives

who had brushed past mine

and wonder just what they were thinking

at that particular moment.

Charades

Photographs lie.

Extraneous reality is framed out.

Perspective and lighting are carefully selected.

One moment out of an infinite series of moments is chosen.

And yet they can convey something important.

Eyes aren’t much better.

We notice only a fraction of what we see.

We commit to memory only a fraction of what we notice.

Frankly, we interpret what we see without thinking through a lens of preconception.

And yet sometimes we do see.

Truth and accuracy are overrated.

It’s less important to determine how things really are than to recognize what they mean –

to me, to you.

I already think my photos are good

enough for the company.

I want to know which ones you like, and why.

They mattered enough to me to show.

The question is do any of them mean something to you?

As far as I’m concerned this is all one big game of charades.

I have gestured my clues.

I have pantomimed one idea after another.

I have jumped up and down, flapping my arms.

I have slapped my forehead in disbelief.

One day, you and I will be walking across the bridge

and I will point my finger out over the water winking sky and sun

and then, finally, you will see what I see

and touch the tip of your finger to the tip of my nose.

And we will hold hands and jump over the railing –

and ascend into the ever blackening sky,

up through the empty, empty spaces between the stars

until finally we hit one

and are drawn deep into its fiery core –

and then we will continue as we usually do

to the other side of the river

like nothing has happened.