Skip to main content

These Eyes

 These eyes are deep brown,

They've seen for decades.

Sights include:

Those who hate (heard too)

Emotional darts thrown at the vulnerable.

Poverty from aging wooden homes,

Whose walls have child-eyes,

Empty kitchens,

Clothes long gone,

cheap highs in the gutter,

Catatonic, clinging survivors,

unemployment waiting rooms,

unnecessary wars,

Prime of life interrupted,

Friends gone too soon.



Then too, 

meadow streams,

Alpine lakes,

Crystal rivers,

Love returned,

isolation,

watercolor worlds,

gleaming coat of a thoroughbred,

Black spotted golden Redside trout,

Fluorescent blue/pink spotted Brook trout,

Black/tan Brown trout,

Willie Mays play,

100,000 people in the street,

Iron gate at the White House,

Coffins on the Capital steps,

Texas, Montana, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Newark, New Orleans, Baltimore, Portland, Atlanta, Dallas, Los Cabos, Mex. from above,

Son House, Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis, Arthur Crudup, Miles, Brownie and Sonny, Big Mama, Donovan, Dylan, 

Appreciation

Seeds planted.

Intelligence harvested.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Illusory

What does it take to enrage you?  That moment when your words fly on pure emotion because enough is enough.  Is it a driver that cuts you off at high speed?  What about being an eyewitness to blatant racism or on the receiving end of some obvious injustice? I know some people who never express rage.  I admire them but know full well I am not capable of such distance from that which would bring about such a strong response. Another senseless shooting and 7 people die at the hands of a mentally ill gun owner.  The father of the 20 year old college student lets it fly and somehow millions feel a new sense of relief.  He calls the politicians bastards who do nothing, he wears his pain in public.  The news media responds but we all know that nothing is going to change.  We are the gun country.  We are the place where anybody, anytime, can be cut down just for being there when somebody else snaps. Usually the perpetrators are delusional. ...

Mr. Greene v. Mr. Brown

I want to tell you about something. Something I've carried inside myself for a number of years now. Perhaps if I were a different kind of person I wouldn't need to talk about it. I'm not. My need to tell it is stronger than your need to hear it. Because, however, there are a number of teachers and former students of mine who may read these meanderings from time to time, I need to tell this story all the more. About 7 or 8 years ago I was asked if I would allow a university PhD. candidate to observe an English class. At first I decided against it because I was scheduled to have a student teacher placed with me the second half of the semester in question. After some urging, however, at the request of a respected colleague, I agreed. Soon I was committing to extra meetings, signing documents and explaining to the class in question who the young woman who thoughtfully pounded away on a laptop in the rear of the classroom three times a week was. I knew that the topic of ...