Humming

September 6, 2017. Still on edge from Hurricane Harvey assaulting the Texas coast, I now watch with great distress as Hurricane Irma targets to pass directly over my former home in Florida.  I watch with empathy for all in Irma’s pathway – the reality of Houston-area aftermath so raw, and Florida may get even more devastation.

But along with property damages, storm refugees, and gasoline supply panics, I cannot help notice all the fresh blooms arrived in response to the abundant rain here on Harvey’s fringe.  The bees are noticing, too – so eager that I smile in spite of tensions.

And when I finally find pumps with gasoline, I look at the others eagerly filling their vehicles – all of us somehow friendlier with strangers than usual – smiling, waving.  We’re like the bees, buzzing after our fuel.  Quite the energy hum.

The collage mixes found human-essential images with bee photos from my backyard.

Challenge

February 27, 2017.  I’m stepping back into 2007 for this image and poem, which feel appropriate given prevalent prickly agitation. This image was taken on Alamo Mountain, near El Paso, on a hike to view ancient rock art images left by a culture challenged daily with adversity.  Perhaps we, too, will learn to live with constant conflict.  But maybe we can bridge polarized opinions – it’s a challenge worth considering.

Survivor’s Love Song

October 14, 2016.  I’ve been immersed in another poetry class with Lorraine Mejia @ http://www.lorrainemejia.com/ – this one working with Latin American Poets.  Wonderful exposures to poems I otherwise might not encounter, plus stimulus to write poems I otherwise might not.  The poem below is indirectly in response to reading Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Song Of The Barren Orange Tree” – and in gratitude for the live oak tree in my front yard.   I offer this in explanation:

Presumptuous, yes

Nevertheless descriptive

of years together

Nevertheless

December 4, 2015.   I am spinning with the heart-breaking understory of a young mother compelled to sacrifice herself for a cause she deemed greater than her own baby – left with grandmother on her way to kill and be killed.  Compassion for the child comes easily.  As for the mother? Much tougher.   Yet nevertheless a little peace crept in while observing the Chiapas sage in first rays of sunshine.  I don’t know the hows to stem violence, defensiveness, distrust.  But I feel certain hate and relaliation are counterproductive.  I won’t go there.