day 25, 30 paintings in 30 days challenge

here's looking at you, kid, acrylic and ink

for some odd reason which i have yet to discover,

i love roosters.   maybe it's the pride with which 

they seem to hold their head up high, 

as if they pay no heed to how funny looking 

they are.  or perhaps, it is the silly wattle.  

well, you may or may not be interested to know

that the smithsonian did a study on why roosters 

have wattles by studying  the behavior of hens around

roosters with regular wattles, without a wattle and

with a wattle that flops around quite a bit.  the winner,

that is the most attractive  at least in the estimation of hens 

is the one with the regular wattle.  

i love roosters even more now that i know this.

day 24, 30 paintings in 30 days challenge

untitled. acrylic and ink

my life

Sometimes I see it as a straight line
drawn with a pencil and a ruler
transecting the circle of the world

or as a finger piercing
a smoke ring, casual, inquisitive

but then the sun will come out
or the phone will ring
and I will cease to wonder

if it is one thing,
a large ball of air and memory,
or many things,
a string of small farming towns,
a dark road winding through them.

Let us say it is a field
I have been hoeing every day,
hoeing and singing,
then going to sleep in one of its furrows,

or now that it is more than half over,
a partially open door,
rain dripping from eaves.

Like yours, it could be anything,
a nest with one egg,
a hallway that leads to a thousand rooms ---
whatever happens to float into view
when I close my eyes 

or look out a window
for more than a few minutes,
so that some days I think
it must be everything and nothing at once.

But this morning, sitting up in bed,
wearing my black sweater and my glasses,
the curtains drawn and the windows up,

I am a lake, my poem is an empty boat,
and my life is the breeze that blows
through the whole scene

stirring everything it touches ---
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy, leafy trees along the shore.

by Billy Collins