Skin and Bones

Just A Quick Little Something Baked in My Own Creative Oven

A creative quickie. "Our California Horse Life." 3 minutes.

American Genius 4 Enemy Lines

The fourth part in a biographical series about a rancher who served heroically in World War II.

6 1/2 minutes.

If you have difficulty viewing the movie below, here is the YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsY8Crpl_Pc

Merce Cunningham

Rest in peace.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I wanted desperately to live in some strange place, which I had never heard of, called "Brooklyn", because Merce Cunningham and his dance troup were resident there. I was from a small village in northern New Hampshire and had not ventured far from the mountains. At University, I fell into a pattern. Infatuation with girls of the arts. Dancers, painters, writers, poets, actors, sculptors, life models, musicians. I was in love with avant garde, with innovation, with eccentricity. Everything I clearly was not. Not inspite of writing poetry for myself. In Saturday Review of Literature, which I read in the University library's magazine room, I often read of Cunningham and other dance groups and artists living in Brooklyn. I couldn't even conjure up images of the place. Of course, I never went there. And I could not get one of my adored artists to acknowledge my existence. I was a book grind. I spent no time in the studio, all my time in the library, reading, researching, taking notes, writing. That pattern never changed. My fascination for the exotic woman lingered, though, unachieved. That didn't change, either. But not for a loss, it embued every woman I met with the hope of the unfamiliar. It made life endlessly new.

Silences of a Summer Morn

The net of city noise

Lies taut on summer's voice.

Sunken freeways pulse

With dull traffic's roar,

Low C-17s

Wheel suspended 

Between battles afar

And worries sighing

On the airport floor,

Power mowers weave

Their looms of grass,

Blowers plow leaves

Beneath the trees

Into loose sheaves

Collecting bags take,

Century freight trains

A hundred cars a mile make

Screech their warning horns.

Yet in the interstices

Life finds fertile

Silence in which to grow,

Draws memory for rain,

Hope for fresh air.

A world recedes.

The morning shapes

A silent nave.

A world grows near.

Cooper's hawks whistle,

Subaltern finches squeak,

Racoons scamper last foraging,

Coyotes yawn to bed for the day,

Bees contemplate

Perfumed purple bells

Fallen from towers of

Jacaranda,

Gnats hover over

Moist grass.

New Hampshire

Summers past,

The glassy stillness of Squam lake,

No ducks or loons or motor boats

Break the morn,

Deer drink at water's edge

Beneath high pines,

Long legged bugs ride

A concert of rings.

Distant a trout

Stirs the surface of the pond.