I've begun this page to show a few pieces of art for which I've written at the galleries and venues shown. Several of the other pages at this site contain earlier ekphrastic tributes; thus the title of this page: More Ekphrastics. Please click on the art photo to enlarge it.

So far on this page are these ten poems and the art that inspired them (artist's name in parentheses):

Prickly (Bush)

Arboreal Thoughts (Dadasovich)

A Bonnard Bath (Reusch)

Evans Onions (Evans)

A Child's Game (Fasciato)

Wire We Here? (Dernham)

Dance (Bailey)

Query (Sabre)

Chapla a Decade Ago (Chapla)

Cows on Contra Costa Hills (Chapla)

From the Arts Benicia February 2019 “Art of a Community” ekphrastic poetry reading (click to enlarge):

At the Benicia Library for August 2015 the ekphrastic exhibit "Streets and Straits in Poetry and Paint" contains 13 combos, of which my poem for Michael Dadasovich's painting is one.

ARBOREAL THOUGHTS

for Michael Dadasovich's The Telephone Poles

A dead one stands next to me.

Wires are strung from it

to another farther away.

I suppose it's a warning to behave,

notice that if we don't stay

within the range

of parameters they've set for us,

we'll be dealt with the same –

chopped down and shaved,

punched with metal,

held up to ridicule,

stems lopped off,

frond fingers gone.

When I was younger,

I didn't notice the ones they'd killed.

Their skin wasn't like mine.

Nearly invisible to me,

they were nothing I'd ever become.

I've gotten taller.

Creatures play in me.

We enjoy my multi-limbed maturity.

Occasionally one of my branches breaks and makes a mess,

but my bad behavior hasn't caused them to punish me yet.

I try not to notice the dead ones,

limbless and strangled by metal and wires.

When my mind wanders to endings,

I prefer Nature and her quick way with fires.

In May 2015 "Abode" was one of Mary Reusch's many pieces of art on exhibit at

Cascade Gallery, 2840 Thornapple River Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546

A BONNARD BATH

after Mary Reusch’s painting "Abode"

Do we regard

Pierre Bonnard

as an artist

whose kindness

shone brighter

than his best hues?

For whom did he draw

this aqua bath?

I might ask

but do not need to know

whose skin will glow

as I imagine her

looking through

reflecting droplets

when they collect

like sparkling dew

on the high window.

I might have seen her

in his works,

unidentified,

his mistress perhaps,

or maybe his wife,

happily immersed

and now suddenly

visible to me

while her mate

in the next room

arranges his paints

as she gleams,

stretched out,

stress free,

in her Bonnard bath,

not briefly

but eternally.

Epperson Gallery, 1400 Pomona, Crockett, CA, November 2013.

One of many Dean Evans paintings that Epperson Gallery has shown.

Two words in this ekphrastic botanical poem might need explaining:

1) “grokking” is taking in the scene, or as Robert Heinlein defined it in his 1961 “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed.

2) “blow” refers to cocaine.

EVANS ONIONS

after Yellow Onions by Dean Evans

He's painted us with lips.

He minimized my nose.

We don't have any hips,

unlike the fragrant rose.

My neck has stretched. I'm grokking,

and I glow.

I'm bored. My eyelid's dropping.

I want blow.

Can onions have ideas of bliss,

asks no one that I know.

Dean Evans painted them like this.

Don’t show them to van Gogh.

Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First Street, Benicia, CA

Catherine Fasciato exhibit, November 2014

A CHILD’S GAME

after Catherine Fasciato’s Breaking

This isn't a question for wizards

designed to make anyone tremble.

It's a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors,

asking, "Which does the sea most resemble?"

Not the rocks you see looking solid

despite their constant assault

like a dad in his armchair, stolid

while the kids are swirling about.

We know blades on scissors cut clean

and the sea has a scissor-like sheen,

but rock grooves take decades to make,

only etching dad's old, jagged face

when the kids have kids of their own.

Perhaps the answer is paper alone

that wraps around rocks. Wait! When wet,

it won't win this child’s game in a bet.

If paper's no answer, what should be done

without any winner to make the game fun?

Do dad and the kids get a say?

And mom with her hair blown to spray?

For now let’s agree to let everyone be

before we concede to the winner, the sea.

Epperson Gallery Eclectic Exhibit, 1400 Pomona, Crockett, CA, June 7-July 20, 2014.

Whether Patterns by Pamela Merory Dernham

WIRE WE HERE?

If weather,

inflicted from without,

or arriving from within,

hollows us like the wind,

rearranging our parts

in interacting arcs

that some might term tragedy

and others call art,

we’ll probably see correctly

only when we break free

and look back,

perhaps

deciding right then that

we’re not meant to move unceasingly

through cacophonies of tasks

but are built to rest and roam,

engage in flights of fancy

in every whether zone,

ask, “Wire we here?”

catch ourselves in comedy,

groan a bit, and laugh.

Betty G. Bailey's Dance the Hokey Pokey

DANCE

These eight have reached maturity.

They seem to like to throng.

Their smiles portray such purity.

Let nothing here go wrong.

All dressed in white they glide

and shake their body parts.

An eight placed on its side

below their feet's a start

at sketching their infinity

while they pursue their art.

I like them as one entity.

Let none of them depart.

Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First Street, Benicia, CA, March 2014.

Iris Sabre exhibit

QUERY

after Arch Rock, Point Lobos

by Iris Sabre

Spent and inert to our gaze,

they watch water’s unceasing commotion,

recalling how much they've been changed

in ways they cannot understand.

Once fluid, now hardened and scarred by erosion,

persuaded that choice is no more than a notion,

they still ask themselves which they’d choose―

to be arch but steadfast, a point on the land,

or more like the ocean,

surprising and grand.

Going back more than a decade, I found a couple of pieces in a 2003 exhibit by Robert Chapla at a gallery that no longer exists: Off the Preserve in downtown Napa. The show was curated by Ann Trinca, and the following are two of our combos from it.

CHAPLA A DECADE AGO

How did he cube

this California scene

to its essence?

I suppose it fulfills the rules

of abstraction: the reflection

condensed

of rain clouds, trees, a stream

of captured flow.

In the distance

a slim, blue strait line,

barely discernible,

threads its hello

before a background

of animal hills, sleeping

or dying. We residents

don't know.

Martinez. Carquinez.

extracted a decade ago

from the view within

the frame, as new

as nature,

as old

as the future.

COWS ON CONTRA COSTA HILLS

Their field is composed of sweet orange puffs,

the chewy sponge shapes sold at KMart

in cellophane bags for children.

How comfy they look, far away from us,

encased in nature and the painter's art,

where life feels absurdly golden.

Close hills ascend to ambergris

several hundred yards behind them,

as trees bubble like foam

into green sea that we might guess

hides a natural salt gem,

a lick near where they roam.

The month must be July or August.

It looks that hot or even hotter.

The two could be molded chocolate

except for melting and their colors' oddness.

Lavender Yin lolls like an otter,

while bronzed Yang plans to get

a quick whiff of her purple. He's turned.

We'll never foretell but can think

what we want. I imagine their taking a vow.

Or, like figures on Keats' Grecian urn

in an infinite pastoral link,

their balance will play in the curious now.