Woodpile photo by Howie Lisnoff.
Dappled Sunlight On August Woodpile
Wood stacked for fall and winter, perhaps a cold spring… catches the warm dappled afternoon sun and south wind… It is early August… Too soon to contemplate the pain and inevitability of leave-taking.
Rainy scene from a Vietnamese restaurant on Madison Avenue, Albany, NY. Photo by Howie Lisnoff.
Par 4 Near the Killing Fields
Rain pools and flows into east rivers down Madison Avenue in Albany after so many weeks of crackling blue skies and heat. From the window of the Vietnamese restaurant, forty-one years past the mayhem and murder of Southeast Asian children and crimes of grotesque war… They murdered kids at Kent and Jackson, too… They are still killing for power and glory and wealth and God, the kids of Africa and the Middle East and the places between… It does not end… A classic piano solo plays in ever-rising beauty against the gray day as an answer to the madness… It does not work… The sons of bitches have turned this planet into a battlefield for the hell of it. Retirees are golfing near the killing fields.
Cumulus clouds… Photo by Howie Lisnoff.
High Summer
Great endless trailing masses of white billowing cumulus ride in on a west wind.
Photo by Howie Lisnoff.
The clouds softly caressed the mountainside like fleeting love.
Jackson Browne played plaintive chords about the open road beneath a pale three-quarter moon rising above the Berkshire Hills at Tanglewood as the Earth turned toward summer and the universe was ablaze with the sounds of creation.
Photo by flyhighhg.com.
Chatting Amicably
Eddie and I drove out of the morning mist of the August Catskills
The Quickway to the turnpike and Long Island
A rainbow swarm of hang gliders filled the robin’s egg cloudless sky
Diving fearlessly among the high peaks
The powerful Buick left behind Swan Lake in its wake
Gliding smoothly toward the great city
The fighter pilot and war resister chatting amicably
As the summer heat grew with the morning.
Bruce and I on Motorcycles
In past years, Bruce and I rode down the spine of the summer Berkshire Hills from Pittsfield on Route 41 toward Great Barrington, wind flowing effortlessly over our handlebars and helmets, roaring engines’ sound behind us and the gently undulating mountains to our east in pine and spruce and juniper and maple and beech and oak, passing by in great waves of sensual delight.
Photo by Howie Lisnoff.
The Sky Above the Apple Orchard
The sky above the apple orchard was a cobalt blue today and storm clouds raced away on southern breeze. Summer had arrived upon the land.
Photo by Howie Lisnoff.
Emptying
A salamander or frog or stingray
Rode in with summer warmth on south winds
Above the treetops in a blue crystalline sky
Childhood memories
Long-lost summer days with a
Kid’s dreams of cloud shapes
And limitless time.
Mountain Meadow, Spring, Olana, Hudson, NY. Photo by Howie Lisnoff.
May New Again
The days of cold rain
Departed on strong winds west
Left sky crystalline
And cloud
It was May again
Above the killing fields
The ancient and forgotten weathered country graves.
It will all circle again back
Lovers in meadows green
Near sounding shore
It will be as though none of this has happened.
There will be other skies
And wind
New sea and meadow field
And they will think
Of these
As new.
Children turning cartwheels
Below
The ageless sun
And it will all seem new again.
And star leaden skies
Moonless
And cricket chorus.
And wildflower rainbow fields.
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