a poem for a Sunday...

When an early bird
deftly plucks a spider
from her dew starred morning web,
she leaves behind a work of art
no less beautiful
and no more ephemeral
than an abandoned cathedral in the mist.

A man (or woman) could work an entire lifetime
and never make something so harmonious,
so mysterious,
so captivating in its power.

Think on this, you small Creators --
you who are no Frank Lloyd Wright, no Gaudí.
Think, when the opportunity of your life
leads you to both wonder and despair.

Sit in the dew starred silence and know
that although your striving will be all a vanity...

nonetheless...

because you were here,
that same web's cold intent,
now seen,
has become a thing held in eternity --
a thing as precious
as your own,
flitting,
dew starred
life.

"Dont' Call, Don't Show"

Despite my lack of musical talent, I seem to have developed an uncontrollable songwriting habit. My wife says my funny songs are my best songs, so here you go:

Happy 40th Birthday to Me!

via GIPHY

regret

Depending on what kind of music fan you are, this story may make you want to punch me in the face.

In the early 2000s I was living in a dilapidated camper/trailer in my friend's back yard in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. It was winter—which in British Columbia means it was drizzly-cold and gray most of the time—and it was on one of those dark, drippy evenings when my friend Kirsten called and told me I had to get down to Vancouver that night to see her boyfriend's band play a show. I think the venue was Richard's on Richards, but the details are a bit hazy.

What is not hazy is Kirsten's enthusiasm for the band, with which she was at the time touring the country—handling their merch table.

"They're really, really good," she said. "Nobody knows who they are yet, but they're totally gonna be famous. Come on down. You can hang out with me and the band in the green room and then afterwards we can maybe do something. But seriously. They're awesome. You'll love them."

So, yeah. Girlfriend thinks her boyfriend's band is awesome. Yawn.

Remembering Danny Fast

Looking back, I can't quite understand why Danny Fast was my friend. He was, after all, twenty years older than me, and when we first started spending time together I was just a little boy—younger by several years than my eleven year son old is today.

I know why I was his friend, though: Danny was a celebrity.

The Lives of Fishermen

I got my first canoe when I was twelve years old. It was a dugout, which I bought new for I think forty bucks from a skilled local craftsman whose name I can't remember. A criminally low price for something he’d worked on for weeks: chopping the tree with an axe, burning out the middle, and then hand-hewing the wood until he had the perfectly shaped little boat-for-one. And a small one, at that: I was a pint-sized, introverted, and bookish little pre-teen, the child of missionary schoolteachers growing up barefoot and half wild in the Amazon basin of Peru, South America.

My Top-Ten Favorite Films (and more) of 2018

This is not a Best-Of list, because ranking art is silly. These are just the filmed entertainments I watched and liked most, and that I felt were fine exemplars of their respective genres.  So without further ado...

strength

Lately I've been thinking about how much the patriarchy sucks (in part due to the novel THE POWER, by Naomi Alderman). Perhaps that's why—when I was looking for something to doodle on to keep my hand in the ol' arting game—I chose to incorporate a couple of images from a National Geographic article about widowed women who are fighting back against marginalization in oppressive cultures.

Or maybe I just thought they looked cool.