Silence...

I journal, I blog, and lately I've been writing poetry.

 

SILENCE

A poem by C.C.

In other days you filled the silence

With your herky-jerky exuberance,

Big dog with a bull-whip of a tail.

Silence, your dog tags jingling.

Silence, with the scratching and scraping

Of your front paws

As you shot your favorite ball 

Backwards from out between your hind legs.

Silence of your goofy scuffle

To get your toy back under control again.

Silence, as you contentedly chewed up one ball after another, chomping your way through a succession of expensive pet toys. 

Silence, at night,

with background lapping of water in the dark.

Silence with a sigh,

As you circle, and down you lie.

Silence, except for the worrisome sound

of licking, licking,

forever licking,

Perpetually grooming ---

Handsome dog with too much hair.

Oh, the silence

Is truly silent now.

The same road noise, bird song, 

squirrel scold, cicada screech...

But oh, so silent

without my friend at my side.

Deep silence since a good dog died.

  

Beautiful in Any Language

PEACE & Get a Life!

PEACE & Get a Life!

TO MY FELLOW 

EARTHLINGS! 

First Morning in Taos

"FIRST MORNING IN TAOS" acrylic on board 12"x12"

 The name of this painting used to be "Last Spring" and it was a picture of an apple tree in blossom, painted on a one foot square piece of masonite.  I painted it in the spring of 2013, after a bad winter with my fibromyalgia, when I thought this would surely BE my last spring!

I don't know why I painted the entire board sky-blue first.  This isn't my usual routine or the way I normally paint. And when I was finished with the apple tree, I didn't like it at all. It was way too heavy-handed on the blossoms, so I put it away.

Recently, while preparing for an art show, I found the thing and a light-bulb went on in my head! This was the embryonic beginning of a Taos painting, started a whole year before I even thought of going to northern New Mexico. The sky-blue background is so fitting for Taos, where the skies can be achingly blue at times.

My first morning in Taos, I woke up and stepped out to a beautiful early spring snowfall. I grabbed my camera and walked out into the ancient apple orchard across the acequia from my cabin. Wet glops of snow covered every blossom and stuck to the tree bark. By noon, the snow had melted.

So all I needed to make this a "Taos painting" was to add snow to the tree trunk and ground. And an authentic Taos painting was born: 

"FIRST MORNING IN TAOS."

War Zone - America

[NOTE: Photos borrowed from news sources show recent violent, racial rioting in Ferguson, MO.]

The Second Coming

by W. B. Yeats (1919)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

PRAY FOR PEACE!

Looking for Something...

TO CHEER ME UP!

I'm feeling all lonely and blue today. I've been alone all week while Rich does the haying. He said yesterday was going to be the big Hay-Day, but the weather turned off cool (HEY! I'm not complaining!), so the hay didn't dry down like it usually would on a hot summer day. I'm hoping they get it baled and put up today, so he can have the 4th off.

I'm trying to get ready for my upcoming art show August 1st. There's so much to be done, that should have been done months ago... it's overwhelming.

So I took my camera outside and caught some flowers to cheer me up. (nice try...)

NEW Painting --- My Chimayo

El Santuario de Chimayo, NM  (16x20 acrylic)

This is the beautiful little chapel in the mountains that I made a pilgrimage to in April. It's the first painting of my new series "Two Weeks in Taos."

(If it seems a little tilted to the left there, it's not.  Just bad picture-taking.  I'll try to get a better shot & replace it soon.)

Hakuna Ma Tatas

Last Saturday we had the Curves/Avon 5K Walk for Breast Cancer Awareness.  I'm unable to walk across the yard without hurting myself, so I couldn't join the gals. But I took my camera with me and became their unofficial photographer. We had so much fun for a good cause.