The poet Yeats awoke in old age

to find his “circus animals” had fled

I’m no Yeats and some years younger

so mine must be on holiday

waiting on the softer light 

soon their vanity will prevail

they’ll pose before me

until then I’ll take from here and there

I’ll wait them out - I’ll pretend I don’t care

Thai Goddess

Normally a nondescript bloodless statue 

with nothing to provoke eyes or head

but for a few minutes in May

I am Pygmalion and she Galatea

brought to life by Chiaroscuro

 

Africa Rising Over Suburbia

I took this picture in 1990

Public Enemy was fighting the “Power”

now eighteen years later a new voice rises

but some on earth are still misguided

by fear as groundless as vaporous clouds

The Ascension of Washington

A profile of the Father floats over his shrine

he ascends to Heaven his hands in prayer

his wig on tight his face looking forward

but disregard what lags behind

a disguise against unwonted eyes

I couldn’t believe it I thought I’d been had

only once in a Kalpa these stars align

Big Foot is fit, alive, and well

emerging from the forest like an arboreal swell

he’s peaceful and harmless, unwilling to fight

just don’t mock him he becomes uptight

Victorian woman up in the sky

I altered nothing not even a fly

I’m all thumbs when it comes to drawing

but I can click when something’s showing

East Wing of the National Gallery of Art

Sky and building go together 

interchangeable when light and times incline

Earth Sky Gods and Mortals - the Four-Fold said Heidegger

here is their abode - Washington D.C.

former center of the western world

 

Your only rival

Head to Head

Once I frequented the National Gallery 

and looked for scenes of life meets art

here it seems this bald man’s pate

is more alive than Rembrandt’s sitter 

but that’s because of Rembrandt’s sitter

Bactrian Buddha

Bactrian Buddha with an Apollonian face

once you rested in the noble Freer 

in surroundings worthy of your sculpted grace

but now you’ve been moved to a crowded shelf

amid objects in a neighboring museum of art

the Buddha’s rule is “not to attach”

still I’m hoping you’ll reclaim your spot

Art Exhibit

I suspect this teacher said: “Children, sit down on the floor

and write about where we’ve been”

but did she know she created her own exhibit

that fits right in

right down to the rhyming spaces

Chuck Close’s Mother, a Dubuffet

and a guard who comes in three

Guards are more art-like when they walk in a museum

and so are talkers doing any old thing

I watched these young men converge on the wall

once they arrived they installed themselves

Guards look too

they’re not always bored

and when told they are lucky

to work where they do

because art can change lives by opening eyes

theirs become a little wider

She’s been exiled to sit on a bench

while the others get to ride on a carriage

They’ve just flown in from Nebraska and are exited

the others are native and somewhat jaded

and would rather talk among themselves

The Importance of Being Ernst

means you get to be shot twice

These Dancers are gone

but when they were there

they cast a terpsichorean spell

over all who came into their realm

If an art museum is a secular church

here is one of its devotional centers

and its altar a painting by Church, I believe,

Frederick, that is, the sky and vapor man

it’s been many years

but I believe it was cordoned off for future services

 

Do you love the stars like I do

even in the polluted sky?

 

Do you love the stars like I do

oozing light through leaves and branches

unhinging eye beguiling mind

with drugless dreams of ecstasy

all that passes for princely kingdoms and pleasure domes

count for nothing where trees and orbs combine

 

Do you love the stars like I do?

I pass the torch - I’ve done my time

 

In my lens tunnel vision

Binocular Vision

Tidal Basin Admirer

That’s what I’m talking about

Hoplite Warrior

Contact

Confluence

South Lake Tunnel

Olympian

 

Riding the Range

Debris