a bear

3rd summer in Jackson

Thinking about the mountains where
People learn the stars
Clouds rolled in from Nebraska
Dark chords on a big guitar

O

"With your measured abandon
And your farmers walk
with your worn out shoes
and your eagerness to talk
with your mothers burden
and your fathers stare
with your pretty dresses
and your wind swept hair
with your pledge of allegiance
and your ringless hand
with your young woman's terror
and your old woman's plan
with your sisters questions
and your brothers tears
with your empty womb
and the forsaken years
O you"

-Greg Brown

"And again, O God, when I did turn to my house thou didst hear me in my prayer.
Yea, thou art merciful unto thy children when they cry unto thee, to be heard of thee and not of men, and thou wilt hear them."

Alma 33

salty and flaty

if you head west of Salt Lake on I80 you drive through the salt flats which are a huge expanse about the size of New Jersey of nothingness but salt. The military uses this area of Utah to blow things up. No one and nothing lives out here, and its refreshing.

new portrait

The hosts of the air

O'DRISCOLL drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.

And he saw young men and young girls
Who danced on a level place,
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.

The dancers crowded about him
And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.

But Bridget drew him by the sleeve
Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.

The bread and the wine had a doom,
For these were the host of the air;
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.

He played with the merry old men
And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.

He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.

O'Driscoll scattered the cards
And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like a drifting smoke;

But he heard high up in the air
A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.


WB Yeats

THEY'RE RUNNING OUT OF BATTERIES

Pinos Altos Opera House

I was born in the wrong century