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Montpellier, France
Writer, actor, artist, teacher, exploring the world and its levels in fiction, poetry, memoir, photography, fine arts.

Poems




OMG


Me in Iceland around 1986

To say goodbye to it all
is so hard
to it all, all
the things you thought were forever
or at least
so much longer than they turn out to be
so long until
it’s not,
not long at all,
it’s just hard to let it all go
piece by piece:
the dear hearts who died ahead
no solace, really, as
you cry again
over a photo of a friend
gone long before you,
as hard it was then
as now with new ones lost,
saying goodbye to mother
to fathersisterbrother
and all your stuff,
OMG all that stuff,
to the ideas of yourself
you pinned to the walls
inside your skull
like flow charts
-- snapshots
of what you would do --

all those things you would do

saying goodbye to all you will ever be
and all you will never be
it’s hard
it’s just plain hard
so get started okay?






Watching Tsunami Videos on New Year’s Eve

turning to the tube
the last day of the year
filling time
with new uploads
from stricken Japan
March 2011
eons ago it seems now
like silent movies of another age
no idea
those people had
standing on their balconies
sirens hooting
the voice of the city
exhorting them to higher ground
tsunami warning
not enough to quash
their curiosity behind
the certainty of the seawall
no idea
of what was about to come
in the space of a quarter hour
the surge already prepared for them
ocean weight too great to conceive
sliding into their slender bay
no idea
the crush of water would
sweep away all that familiar morning
of tea and light snow falling
a dull, grey day,
with nothing, perhaps, to do
like today
the last day of the year
whiling away an hour
quenching my fear
of what the new year
and the next decade will bring
and blissful, still, with apocalypse
near, perhaps, and
no idea


Thanks to: www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-tsunamis





Lake Washington, c. 2012
The Lake at Sunset
A poem on my mother's death, October 8, 2014.

Just this morning the sun rose sparkling on the lake
and as the day warmed the small birds returned
to the feeder outside your window.
You opened your eyes as I embraced you
and raised your arm bone-thin with infirmity
to rest it across my back and weakly murmured
yes
I’d love a hug.
I cradled your head in my fingers
the bone smooth as stone under your silver-feather hair.
I watched the birds flutter and struggle for the gift of seeds   
watched the cross of waves on the lake
thronging in haste to parts unknown.

With us there is no hurry.

Now is to be still, to breathe with you, to feel
for a few more hours your hand still warm in mine
to pour my words of love into the fragile cup of your
upturned ear   
and then again be still with you
all the world in movement except here   
hovering in quiet sorrow.

Now purple with oncoming night the lake rests
A glowing opal ring of light,
the small birds have gone to their secret nests
the feeder hangs emptied of its trove.
I have no more words but those I’ve said before
I love you I hear you I am with you to the end
as promised,
and now to let you go,
small bird gentle wave,
I will sleep in my nest beside your bed
and wake to find the sun has risen
and you are gone.



Will Rose
October 10, 2014


















To George Pissarro (poem)


So glad to have known you my friend,
lived a piece of your life and art.

To my eyes a genius
unsung, penurious as the greats,
stone and oil
wood and wax, aflame
in your vision,
aloft with wings of canvas
marbled smoothly skyward
you drifted
studio to studio
fed the pigeons that strolled
your kitchen more at home than I,
biked the Hudson,
ferried Staten Island
for twenty years
handed off programs
at Avery Fischer Hall.

What became of your works?
I treasure the sheaf of photos you sent
images of your heart
and wild, wild soul
(your madness could be scary)
and the head of stone
you bequeathed me
broken from its body,
the very piece you struggled to hoist
up your west-
fifty-
fourth stoop
a winter day
in the past century --
something fluttered in my ribcage:

"Need a hand?"

How a life may bend on such a bone.

So glad to have known you,
crazy Portuguese francophone,
amazing carver and smoother of stone;
had I the means I'd have been the patron
you deserved,
could have saved your work and vision
but probably never

you.














Intuitive Clutch 

The crack between knowing 
the grasp that exceeds the reach
the mind's walking stick. 

Gear for shape-shifters
night reveries 
dream voices on a separate track  
sotto voce
infinite point of matter
seen edgewise
shimmer of reeds
in ripples
the legend of mind on
an unseen map  


In dreams hold your arms a certain way, and fly. 


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