Contemporary British Art – Andrew Bret Wallis
Below (photographs) – “Snow Oak Silence”; “Rocking Hall”; “Lightning Tree”; “Sundown”; “Winter Vigil”; “Silver & Gold.”
A Poem for Today
“Spirit of the Bat”
by Peggy Schumaker
Hair rush, low swoop—
so those of us
stuck here on earth
know—you must be gods.
Or friends of gods,
granted chances
to push off into sky,
granted chances
to hear so well
your own voice bounced
back to you
maps the night.
Each hinge
in your wing’s
an act of creation.
Each insect
you snick out of air
a witness.
You transform
obstacles
into sounds,
then dodge them.
Contemporary Hong Kong Art – Clement Tsang
Below (photographs) – “Beautiful Sun Shining”; “The Night Scenery”; “Sunset in the Forest“; “The Lonely Tree”; “The White and Green Tree”; “The Lake Side Hotel.”
A Poem for Today
Untitled
by Jonathan Greene
Honored when
the butterfly lights
on my shoulder.
Next stop:
a rotting log.
Below – Susan Houston: “Butterfly on Log” (photograph)
Contemporary American Art – Cindy Press
Below – “Hangin On”; “Breaking Silence”; “Finally Sat Alone”; “Fearless”; “Your Secret’s Safe With Me”; “Turning Point.”
A Poem for Today
“Releasing a Tree”
by Thomas Reiter
Softly pummeled overnight, the lower
limbs of our Norway spruce
flexed and the deepening snow held them.
Windless sunlight now, so I go out
wearing hip waders and carrying
not a fly rod but a garden hoe. I begin
worrying the snow for the holdfast
of a branch that’s so far down
a wren’s nest floats above it like a buoy.
I work the hoe, not chopping but cradling,
then pull straight up. A current of air
as the needles loft their burden
over my head. Those grace notes
of the snowfall, crystals giving off
copper, green, rose—watching them
I stumble over a branch, go down
and my gloves fill with snow. Ah, I find
my father here: I remember as a child
how flames touched my hand the time
I added wood to the stove in our ice-fishing
shanty, how he plunged that hand
through the hole into the river, teaching me
one kind of burning can ease another.
The branch bobs then tapers into place
and composes itself, looking
unchanged though all summer
it will bring up this day from underfoot.
Below – Mary Hughes: “Snow Pine Tree”
Contemporary German Art – Johanna Bath
Below – “shade”; “dream weavers”; “nostalgia”; “every move we make”; “somewhere somebody thinks about you (parallelism)”; “you carry the stories of people before you”; “watching you watching me.”
A Poem for Today
“This Morning I Could Do A Thousand Things”
by Robert Hedin
I could fix the leaky pipe
Under the sink, or wander over
And bother Jerry who’s lost
In the bog of his crankcase.
I could drive the half-mile down
To the local mall and browse
Through the bright stables
Of mowers, or maybe catch
The power-walkers puffing away
On their last laps. I could clean
The garage, weed the garden,
Or get out the shears and
Prune the rose bushes back.
Yes, a thousand things
This beautiful April morning.
But I’ve decided to just lie
Here in this old hammock,
Rocking like a lazy metronome,
And wait for the day lilies
To open. The sun is barely
Over the trees, and already
The sprinklers are out,
Raining their immaculate
Bands of light over the lawns.
Below – Chris Otte: “Sky Hammock”
