November Soul Survival

 

 

 

Alive to the shimmer

a fishing egret

 

 

 

 

 

Comorants you always have with you,

a less common variety 

 

 

 

After some wild atmospheric river rain storms 

it went back to sunny, mild and, alas, dry

 

 

 

 

 

What's left of Eden

 

 

 

The relatively new and glorious garden gate 

open at last

 

 

 

 Late appearing bloom

 

Bees love these

 

 

 

Resurgent grasses

 

 

 

 

Pavilion of Shade

 

 

 

 

Thriving in cool moist semi-shade

 

 

 

 

Patterns of life and culture

 

 

 

Buoyant colors

 

 

 

A head of green

 

 

 

 Burgundy and fuchsia

with delicate lavender flowers

 

 

 

Petrified serpent

 

 

 

Fungus is a force of nature

 

 

 

 

Incarnadine leaves

 

 

 

 

 

Machine of loving grace

 

 

 

 

Rhododendron in heaven

 

 

Au revoir

 

 

 

 

3. 

Desert clime

 

 

 

 Everything has its point

 

 

 

 

 A succulent scene

 

 

 

 

graphic cactus

 

 

 

You may eat them

if you dare

 

Nature is seldom embarrassed

Touch me not

 

 glimpse into the Palmetum 

 

 

Another lark in the park

or in this case crows

 

 

Exit via FAIRYLAND

 

 

Another afternoon in November

 

 

 

Little pal

 

 

 

 

a short visit

 

 

 

 

 Life is sort as well

yet I don't agree with this idea

The plaque will go on and on

as fewer and fewer people remember who

 

 

 

 

 

 Young lady modeling

 

 

 

 Puts a little bush in the old tail

 

 

Read of a trend in Japan 

of "forest-bathin"

Mindful idling under trees

 Essentially what I've done my entire life

 

It's closing time

 

 

And then the finger of Fate

indicates it's gotten late

now they must lock the gate 

But I linger on benches just outside

where it's not lonely for long

 

 

 

 The gounds-keeper gave them some food

This fellow wonders if I have any more in store

 

 

 

 

Soon afterward I am joined

by lovely petite l'oiseaux

 

 

 

They find what squirrels leave behind

 

 

 

 

Avifauna accompany me

on my way out of the park

 

Zip a dee do dah

 

 

 

Epilogos

 

 

Evanescence at sunset

hello Darkness, my old friend

 

 

11, 21, & 24 November 2021

 

Thriller Matinee

 

The grand old

Grand Lake Theater

in elongated  afternoon

 

 

 

 

 

Came today misled

 by an erroneous ad in the newspaper

I was expecting to see

 2001, A Space Odyssey in 70 mm

That's next week they said

without admitting any mistake,

So I decided to stay for this

I'd seen the hair-raising trailer

and suspected it would be an escape

from my day-to-day concerns

 

Look who's here

another elephant

it's unredeemed garishness

excused by design

by school kids

 

 

Charming I'm sure

but I'm not here to see this

Never have particularly liked

ant Spike Lee joint

Infiltrate hate,

Spike is infamous for claiming

that Black people cannot be racist,

Wonder what he thinks about hate,

But then he lives on Martha's Vineyard

and I'm more or less

a white man in the disphoria

of Oakland

 

 

 

Into the heraldic

mystery chamber

for the moving picture

The Moorish Auditorium

so-named

 

Had to change seats twice

At show time a puerile

man mountain sat in front of me,

followed by a senile guy behind

who said oo-oh during fight scenes

then laughed like crazy

 

The film did its job

lots  and lots of very elaborate thrills

in sequences of a mainly analog variety,

People are killed regularly 

death framed without remorse,

Giant stretches of credulity

and of course super-abilities

just short of Marvel comics

 

Poor middle-aged Tom Cruise

has to fill the screen

Still doing a young man's job

 

 

 

I was as high

as the labyrinthine

patterns in a

ceiling of stars

 

After the film

I wandered over to the lake

with my lunch bag

 

Somewhat dismayed to see

it crowded with lodgings

In this case a fort constructed of

pissy old mattresses  

spray-painted with slogans

to pretend it's more of a protest

instead of just a make-shift shanty town,

This is what passes for governance

and humanitarianism

in a crap-cavity town,

This individual grabs a prime spot

at the head of the lake

then acts territorial and hostile

toward the public who try to use the park

 

White lady calls cops on black man

just for staking a claim

 in a public park

 

The landscape was

scary and desolate

enough as it was

 

 

 

 

 

Someone is scratching at the window

That's what the bars are for

 

 

 

Home home on the strange

where the prickly cactus flowers

flourish

 

 

 

 

 

9 August 2018