PAINTING: Tulips by Alexander Couard

This lovely little watercolor painting is by an artist named Alexander Perot Couard. When my parents got married in 1949 Mr. Couard himself gave them this painting as a wedding gift. Mr. Couard and one Miss Burgoyne lived a few houses down the road from my grandparents. When my mother and my Aunt Florence were young children in pigtails, he came to the  house  and took photos of them to reference for various paintings he was working on. (They still have the photos...)

One of the interesting things about this work is that it is all about reflection, It features cut tulips with a oval mirror behind them, which reflects partially opened French doors, and the landscape beyond.

This beautiful work has been on display in my parents house all of my life. I have been looking at this painting for almost 60 years. It may be why I paint.

NOTE: This painting was photographed with a phone through the glass in the frame. 

POEM: Mote in the eye of the cosmos

Mote in the eye of the cosmos

a dot, a speck of dust
one electron circling
a nucleus in a Macro-Atom,
the punctuation at the end of
the longest sentence,
a split infinitive:
to maybe cool to a dark cold rock
like so many others
or a hot dry gumball
or broken into asteroids,
or dust, melted to plasma.

But - we are here now - alive...
ALIVE. Shout it!
Live it! Here!
Right here
on this
speck.

- Mar Walker

This poem was inspired by this

Our speck in space (thanks to NASA, Carl Sagan & @Monicks)

Today I saw a version of this picture with this quotation and was in awe once again, of the vastness we move through every day on our small blue orb. And how speck-like and innocent it seems.  The picture was posted on Twitter by a person named @Monicks but the printed quote was a part of the picture and the text was hard to read to my old eyes. So I hunted up a different version of the photo (found at WikiPedia) and the quote to go with it, so I could share it in larger type So Thank you @Monicks for inspiring me. This picture was taken by the Voyager 1 as it left our solar system in 1990. The little speck inside the circle is Earth seen from close to 4 BILLION miles away.  Here is what Carl Sagan said about this picture:

"Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." ---- Carl Sagan

This inspired a poem

"Aspects of the Self" – at Freight Street’s May Day show

This pencil drawing of mine called "Aspects of the Self," is in the Freight Street Gallery's May Day Festival show which hangs at the gallery through most of May.( I pick it up on May 23). Scroll down on the linked page for a list of artists. There are a lot of really interesting  and colorful pieces in this show in many mediums. If you go, be sure to view the items in the hallways as well as in the main room.   During the opening quite a few musical groups performed. I was there for about an hour and thoroughly enjoyed the spacey musical creations of Martin Ear and Evan. At some point a guy with, what looked like it might be a digery do joined them for a number. Their music really lent itself to the mood of the artwork.   Many thanks to Mike and Dustin Byrne for putting on the show.

This is the first time in two decades I have displayed my work  (other than promotional  posters) in a physical rather than digital sense.

I drew this during a graduate drawing class at Weselyan. The subject is looking inward - and what she sees is various parts of her self as well as her rejected shadow-self. Note she is holding on to the shadow-self rather tightly, so though the shadow is hidden, she is not rejected....

This photo is in black and white. In the drawing itself the paper has a more yellowish color not show here.  One of the techniques I like to use in drawing, is to make a very heavy mark with a soft pencil, then draw back into the marks with an eraser.  That is a technique used in quite a few areas of this drawing. This drawing also appears on the new cover of Inverse Origamii - the art of unfolding, my first poetry chapbook.

NaPoWroMo #30 - The Cleansing Ritual

NaPoWriMo #30

The Cleansing Ritual

Naked, the poet,
indiscreet, uncovers
by lamplight,
her lush rhythms meet
traverse-ing the stanza
with an expanse of skin
ink-stained and thoughtful,
- let the poem begin.

- Mar "Mistryel" Walker
This 30 poems 30 days thing has been fun. Loved the prompts. I need a week off, then I might start again. The photo is of a sculpture of mine that lived in Dedham MA. (a very low res picture altered in an early photo editing freebe.)

NaPoWriMo # 29 - The Wind Farm

The Wind Farm

Down the hill
they raise little breezes, and
let them go free every morning.

These growing aires hustle
climb the fresh trees and rustle
and our delicate spring blooms
their petals jiggle like bangles
and there's cherry petal rain
branches bent at all angles
in the sort of, well,  angry air

The wind is farming now
digging up the dirt
flinging it down
a tornado - mile and a half wide
which takes out ten towns
in a few minutes time.
(Pat Robertson might opine
they were sinning online.)

Without regret or confession,
make this simple concession:
The wind doesn't know your name.
The wind just blows.

- Mar "Mistryel" Walker

==========

I am having a rhyme problem O dear. Can't believe I have come this far 29 days, 29 poems..... only one more to go....

PROMPT: find words from news paper headlines

NaPoWriMo #28 - Not the result he expected

Not the result he expected

After an hour of waiting
ignored, a girl in a mini
directed me
to the big shot's
expansive corner office.

Behind a flat, empty
aircraft carrier
of a desk, an overlarge
black leather chair
cradled the young CEO.
Heavy braided gold chains
swathed his barely
post adolescent neck.
His shirt was wrinkled
and junk food wrapers
littered the floor.

With my resume
in his hand,
he mocked each line
as he studied me
like a sociopath
studies an animal
he is dismembering
or a fly, just before
he tears off a wing.

After the fifth outright insult
I understood the smirk
the icy neon in his eyes.
He was just getting started.

"Well, well,"
I said as I stood suddenly,
strode forward, leaned
over him and yanked
MY resume, My history
from between his
arrogant fingers.

"I can see that we
are personally
incompatible."
I said,
"irreconcilably so."

"What... do you mean?"
he said, mouth still
open wide as I closed
the door, leaving him
alone
in his expansive corner
office in his overlarge
exécutive chair.

====================
This is a true story.   THE PROMPT was to write a poem remembering an “a-ha moment” from my past,  etc etc

My instantaneous intuitive "Ah Ha!" was this: I suddenly knew in my bones all the following, all at once:
a) there was NO chance of being hired. (All the employees I'd met were 25 or under and I was forty plus at the time.)
b) he was settling in to torture me for fun, maybe to get even with his Mommy.
c), I would have HATED working for this little jerk anyway..
d) I WASN'T HELPLESS - I DIDN'T HAVE TO SIT THERE AND TAKE IT - I COULD TAKE BACK MY POWER, TAKE BACK MY RESUME AND WALK OUT. So I did.