My son’s back yard
yields prodigiously,
vegetable-glutted
because rabbit-free.
So I have tomatoes
in my grandma’s old bowl —
what better emblem
of summer’s warm soul?
Such joy to the eye,
such promise of bliss —
the Louvre should have
such beauty as this!
I was feeling garden-poor,
so took my little black pitcher,
snipped some mighty color,
and felt a whole lot richer.
Street art has found a place
in cultural domain;
the spider looks upon it
with the master’s cold disdain.
His webby muse inspires
despite the hours of tedium
to pattern and to form
with gossamer as medium.
In gallery of flowerpots
the moon and sun elide,
performatively joined
on thinnest thready slide.
By night the moon plucks lightly
each string in placid rondo;
by day a somersaulting sun
cavorts in bright glissando.
Known only to the artist
where spinnings stir and start,
sufficient to the self
is ephemera of the art.
So the noiseless patient spider,
in retreat of sweet alyssum,
abjures the common cult
of crass commercialism.
With apologies and thanks to Walt Whitman’s
“A Noiseless Patient Spider.”
Beauty shocks, and steals our breath,
makes our neurons fizz,
forces us to contemplate
what can’t be real
is.
A wink, perhaps,
lightly nefarious:
above the noble
“Stradivarius”
the truth is stamped,
hidden slyly —
“Copy” — by luthier
deft and wily.
I think it was no coincidence that 2020 was the year I attended to my father’s violin, which I had allowed to fall into disreputable condition. I’d needed some sense of grounding, of continuity, in a year of such cataclysmic instability. I had it repaired and renewed for my grandson this Christmas, and there was indeed grounding. This was the instrument my father played in his grade school orchestra, circa 1925.
The one he played in our family Christmas concerts (a merry barnyard kind of sound) and introduced to his grandson circa 1977.
The one I rescued from my own shameful neglect and presented — in its well-worn KantKrack case, beribboned and (it seemed to me) proud — to his great-grandson this Christmas.
A violin doesn’t have to be a Stradivarius to be priceless. And 2020 has made us acutely more mindful of the priceless things that ground us.
Thank you, dear reader, for all your encouragement and insights this year. May the new year bring us all the repair, renewal, and tuning we need, may we be grounded in the priceless things of life, may we be mindful of those who grieve and who care for our sick, and may there one day again be real hugs!
Little fingers
leave a trail
made of paper
bent and frail;
older hands preserve
the mystery
of taped and crayoned
family history.
The fine art of living
can be plated,
the cold of the world
attenuated,
the chill of the news,
bewildering, gruesome,
stayed by affection
expertly toothsome.
With thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
and to popover artist Cassandra Berg.
My house naps quiet
behind the tree;
the world passes by
obliviously.
The grandeur of
my life within,
curtained by
the daily din,
cannot be guessed
by passersby
who see my house
as small and shy.
My stemmed fine art
goes undetected,
like ruby rose window,
unexpected.
A splendid secret:
who could know
my little house
is Chenonceau?
Is the pond a kaleidoscope,
tumbling, soulless,
into accidental beauty,
or does it
in wistful deliberation
dream itself in Giverny?
Like old sepia photo
inviting eye to linger
does sepia of wood
invite admiring finger.
Eminently touchable
in smooth and rounded form,
from chocolate to butterscotch
toasted, glazed, warm.
Like mystery in the photo
the mystery in the wood
makes us stop and ponder
exactly as we should.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
and to Traders Point Creamery, Zionsville, IN.
