Poems

Here are some poems I have written over the years.

Magpie on the Gallows by Bruegel

The Magpie on the Gallows

A river drifts

down the valley

in the summer air

magpies fly

to the tune of the breeze

the bagpiper plays

gloomly

the people walk

to the gallows

hand in hand

they sing and

dance

all the while

one magpie

enjoys the view

Long Island Farm

All around me is

the quiet calm of an

oyster egg shell sky.

It's easy to get lost

in the sea of green

chartreuse sea foam.

I set sail for the horizon,

only to find the trees

disappearing into a lilac haze.

The fog smothers me,

like grandmothers heavy quilt

in such a sea of green,

I am anchored by the peachy

rocks upon which to sit and stretch.

Olive and emerald interplay

to create a subtle shamrock

or perhaps it is parakeet

In this symphony of green

the colors escape

my simple description.

It reminds me of a memory

I never had

of a family vacation

to my grandparent’s

island in the grass.

With one final yawn

I wait for tomorrow’s morning

to see it all again

Southern Landscapes

Photograph by Sally Mann-Southern Landscape

As we drag our gaze across the hill

we note the baldness of the land.

The few scattered trees that remain are

surrounded by modest hillside, dotted

with a collection of curious objects.

Our eyes may speculate they are

the trunks of trees left behind on

the hillside, the by product of

an ax’s slash or root’s rot.

The decayed fate of these trees

does not make one hopeful for

those who remain.

But even more strangely so

is the possibility these blemishes are simply artifacts

of the photo’s chemical nature, left behind

as the photographer leaves her mark

on the hillside.

The photo cracks.

Our two views fracture the photo

from its surroundings.

A Trip to the Art Institute with Annabelle Whitney

Its Saturday and I say “Let’s

go to the museum tomorrow”.

So we go downtown to escape

into the hustle and bustle of

the city. On the highway I see

the vast metropolitan space

creeps ominously near, as if I am

face to face with my own final frontier.

We arrive and its already difficult

to separate the art from its surroundings,

the mighty buildings overlooking the

lush park and shimmering lake

threaten to distract my entire trip.

Inside the museum all I have is

my thoughts, my notebook, my pen

and all the tourists around me.

A family with six red headed children

makes me feel at home.

The Pollock is buzzing in my mind.

I rush to make sure that it is still there

even though I can never remember how

it makes me feel I know it makes me

so much. I watch the Pollock and hope

it watches me back. Before lunch O’Keefe

shows me the sky and I gaze out into

Millenium Park through Chagall's windows.

The Banquet

The Banquet by Rene Magritte

As the day extends into

something before night,

an urn with a plant long dead

sits alone. A bruised red fills

the afternoon like an ache deep

in the muscles, filet mignon

extra rare. The guests

never came but the evening

was never about them.

The meal was delicious,

the kind of meal that

sits in your stomach

like the smoldering sun

below the horizon

lingering like a friend

who doesn't know when

to leave. A collection of

poplars darken the lawn

while the ache persists.

Botany Pond, Hyde Park

On many of my walks back from the library during cold January nights I would often stop at botany pond before bed. I liked to clear my head by sitting next to the water and attempting to ignore the wind and cold. It was always futile but I always felt rewarded by my attempts, as if one day I would be able to just sit and enjoy the pond in all weather. There was a fish I sometimes fed bread to. It was a large orange koi who lived in the northern corner. I never gave him a name but we had a good rapport, I sat by the pond and he swam in circles of various sizes. One day towards the end of a particularly cold week I sat down at the pond and noticed my fish was swimming in unusually small circles. He was likely stuck in a small pocket of water and the rest had frozen around him. I immediately laughed, how absurd for a fish to be stuck in a tiny pocket of water with nothing to do but swim in a lazy circle. I wished my fish luck in his predicament and went to bed. The next few weeks I would come back and chuckle when I would sit next to botany pond and ponder the fish and the crisp cold air of the night.

I had grown rather fond of this fish and liked to think I could confide in it. I felt a strange comfort in its absurd existence. About a week later when I went to check on my fish that night, I saw that he was still moving but now only wiggling back and forth. It seemed his pocket of water had shrunk. I laughed more still. Now he was forced to wiggle back and forth in this tiny bubble but seemed to not mind. He merely just kept swimming-just kept wiggling.

Until one day on a particularly distressing night at the Regenstein I came to the pond hoping for some solace in my nightly ritual but I came upon the distressing discovery that my fish was no longer moving. I did not know if he was hibernating or frozen or simply dead. I was sent into a panic. Had I really derived some sort of pleasure or comfort from watching a fish freeze to death over 2 months? I did not have much time to think about the topic; the next day it snowed and frosted over the ice of botany pond. I could no longer see anything below the surface of the ice and had no idea the fate of my fish.

When spring came not a single fish had survived the winter.

Defintion:
Let the Koi Automota be the simplest automota which can experience happiness.

The Joy of Fish

A logician and a mathematician were crossing the quad to the math building

The logician said, "See how the automota compute and iterate: that is their happiness."

The mathematician replied "Since you are not an automota how do you know what makes automota happy?"

The logician said "Since you are not I, how can you possibly know that I do not know what makes automota happy?"

The mathematician argued, "If I, not being you, cannot know what you know, it follows that you, not being an automota, cannot know what they know. The argument is sound!"

The logician said, "Wait a minute! let us get back to the original question. what you asked me was 'How do you know what makes automota happy?' But in asking this you already knew that I know it. I know the joy of the automoton though my own joy, as I walk along the quad."

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