Paintings with poems

Secrets from the park bench

I sat on a park bench one cool winter morn
As the sun strained against a fresh winter storm
The river beneath wound its way through the trees
While flakes wended down on a wandering breeze

It was a slow type of morning, thoughts hung in the air
Straying gently from there, off some place elsewhere
When suddenly the sky leapt to life with a shake
And waxwings came whistling, the dawn was awake

They twirled and they twisted in eccentric commute
En route to a breakfast of fermented fruit
They munched on their brunch of berries and frost
Then flushed in a flourish, in a flash they were off

And what would the man in his little rowboat
See all to himself as he drifted afloat?
What sounds would the woman as she walked through the snow
Collect and keep hidden? Only she’d know

The Garden Path

Adrift among the sands of time

The old man the boat

The dunes begin to swell and climb

They row to stay afloat

They know not when they are

The hands just point ahead

To an illusive future held ajar

By weathered palms unread

And tethered to the ceaseless pace

Of linear dimension

A growing need starts to replace

All objects of attention

See, to keep pace the present

Is a metabolic strain

And the dearth of desert food foments

Their gastronomic pain

Then from the west a whisper

Brings a sound to ease their woes

A building hymn of buzzing wings

The bow man hoists his bow

The archer’s eyes grow narrow

He spies some ripe organics

‘Cause time flies like an arrow

And fruit flies like bananas

And a single shot’s sufficient

To land plantains aloft

So travelers of time deficient

Can hold the scurvy off

When it comes to time’s fruition

Your hopes are never dashed

If only you hunt for your nutrition

Down the garden path

The Statue Garden

Long ago when the barren earth was rock and ice and sand

A lonely wind was all that stirred across the sleepy land

It crafted craggy mountains and hallowed valleys deep

Yet all that whispered whittling couldn’t help the wind to sleep

It murmured as it carved the hills of better company

It ached for friends to ride its currents and cure the malady

Of rippling over water’s edge and whistling through the dunes

Without more restless wanderers to share the eerie tunes

The wind designed to form its dream of companionship in flight

And eroded granite into creatures of elegance and height

The figures spread their massive wings and the wind was satisfied

Together they’d navigate the world and it could be their guide

For many years they joined aloft to watch the sundrenched peaks

And soar across the melting seas entranced by their mystique

But over time more beasts awoke and crawled from mud and stone

And the fellowship was splintered, the wind again alone

You see its friends were more engrossed in finding frogs and fish

And knew success might only come defying Wind’s one wish

By standing still forever to watch but not distress

The little animals that they hoped would feed their hungry nest

And still today they haven’t moved a step from where they were

They are statues in a world immutably astir

On misty mornings the wind laments its now forgotten dream

But reconciles its lost ambition with sharing the serene

Moonlight Mischief

One silent dawn a silent ship with sails of ivory

Appeared within a sheltered cove after years adrift at sea

The moon, who’d yet to go to bed, had mischief in his eye

“I think,” he thought, “before first light I’ll make this sailboat fly.”

He cast a beam so fair it seemed the surface stopped to stare

And mist arose like narwhal breath to shroud the salty air

Then waves and whales and great white sharks and gulls and even time

Stood still to watch the moon spin spells of magical design

The sea smoke swirled then puffed away to leave the cove anew

The lagoon was as a mirror that told a tale untrue

And so the sloop, becalmed on glass, discerned in its reflection

A bird of grace, finesse and speed to match its own complexion

The reflection splashed its watery wings and transcended two dimensions

Then rose into the lilac light in ethereal ascension

Its feathers firm it cut and curled and arced and wove in turn

And just as fast as it emerged it disappeared astern

I, amidships, wondered if what I had seen was real

The birth of fleeting flight that soared upon ideas

Or had the songs of sirens just turned my groggy head

And spun a tale illusive of deceptive dreamy thread?