Filling depressions in the earth...

Personal Puddles

The rain has swirled away

But left a chain of puddles

On the Headlands trail.

They reflect the pewter

Of the scudding clouds;

Their weed-laced edges mimic

Portuguese Beach’s weaving of tossed logs,

A few deep treaded boots leave

Imprints on their border mud.

We call them “The Great Lakes”.

Pulling memory from our slanted,

Wooden, inkwelled desks

We name them:

The biggest, Superior,

Then Michigan, and . . .

And . . .

Mnemonic from Geography – h o m e s!

We christen Huron, Ontario,

And Erie.

Some smaller watery patches

We call the Finger Lakes:

Cayuga’s ponded waters, burnished blue.

There is a pristine string of lakes—

Five Lakes—in the Sierra.

We name another puddle Claire.

These pools all fill depressions

In the earth.

Each one exists in a particular,

A certain scale of size and time.

Those in Mid-America

Are a reminder

Of the glacial ice and geologic time.

The mountain lakes

Recall our younger selves.

The muddy puddles

Are our now,

Our evanescent, vaporizing future.

February 6, 2003

À la recherche du temps perdu

Two little skunks by the roadside sat
As an automobile whizzed by.
It left an odor far from good
And the tears stood in one's eye.
'Oh why do you weep,' asked the other one,
'Why do you sit and quake?'
'Because,' replied the lonely one,
'It smells like  Mother used to make.'

Quoted by Granddad Daus from ~1910

Eucalyptus Tango

Wind, fire and tears were involved in the making of this sculpture.  

A winter wind whipped bark and leaves from the stand of eucalyptus across the road from us onto our porch.  In the spirit of "if you receive a lemon, make lemonade," I constructed two Giacometti-like dancers, dipped them in wax and proceeded with the usual lost wax procedure.  The figures were cut into pieces and mounted on appropriate wax cups. The multiple dips to form a ceramic shell were performed. One dancer had actually been poured and the other was waiting to be burned out. That's the fire.  Wood is harder to burn out than wax, but works just as well in the end.  

The tears came next when a friend, by mistake, began hammering on my unburned piece, thinking it was her poured one.  Mistakes happen.  But her tears were more deeply felt than as a wrong craft step: she had learned that day that her husband had terminal cancer!  The dancer's shell could be fixed, and was.  Her husband died a few months later./ 

The tango is an emotional dance.  The piece is in the way of an emotion-filled memorial to Hans.

Swinging colors around the sun

July 25, 1981