Dragonflies are alive and well in California hills

I am blessed with seeing the most beautiful large red and dark blue dragonflies on my daily walk through the adjacent park around its little lagoon or pond where a pair of mallard ducks dip for food, and occasionally, early morning, a grey heron appears.

 This poem which I had clipped from the NYT floated up from a notebook page, today:

After the Dragonflies by W.S. Merwin.

Dragonflies were as common as sunlight
hovering in their own days
backward forward and sideways
as though they were memory
now there are grown-ups hurring
who never saw one
and do not know what they 
are not seeing
the veins in a dragonfly's wings
were made of light
the veins in the leaves knew them
and the flowing rivers
the dragonflies came out of the color of water
knowing their own way 
when we appeared in their eyes
we were strangers
they took their light with them when they went
there will be no one to remember us. 

Bill Merwin is in his late 80.s as he heads into the 90's. as of September 30, I think he must turn 90.  ..and I feel like he is saying good bye to the world, to his readers, to his life.  He is nearly blind, and has been losing his sight since the last time I saw him when his film debut took place on Maui.    He would be happy to know that I remember.  That I see dragonflies, that they are still with us.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Giacometti, Yanaihara Isaku.

Image
Yanaihara Isaku was 38 years old at the beginning of his stay in Paris. A recommendation of Jean Wahl had allowed him to get a scholarship from CNRS. In his homeland, he taught philosophy at the University of Osaka; he wrote and meditated about Rouault, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus which he translated  The Myth of Sisyphus  . After the parenthesis of a trip to Greece and Italy, he had agreed to pose for the artist he met at an exhibition for autumn 1955. This decision  transformed his life. Immediate consequence, she brought him to extend his stay in France: Alberto had always need new work days to specify what the disconcerted and frightened from his friend's face.  "Your face ... I see everything tiny and terribly huge ... I must paint the two together. "  Yanaihara had planned to leave for a trip to Egypt before joining Japan. His departure was constantly postponed: Giacometti desperate to complete the portraits he had...
Read more

Markus Schinwald at Wattis Institute exhibition, co curated by SFMOMA as an off site project

Image
Exhibit of images altered to represent "interior psychic adjustment" with external clues   Captivating Duncan pfyfe chair legs climb gold post Neil Benezra, Director of SFMOMA, SF   Anthony Huberman, Dir CCA Wattis Institute Stephen Beal, President  CCA at Wattis Institute               The Viennese Artist, Markus Schinwald, and his life partner, Ginger Dellenbaugh  
Read more

Pauline Kael house with Jess Collins murals, Berkeley

Image
my favorite mural Very exciting!  This house may become a poetry center, like the wonderful house, UPENN has, for its poetry readings.  But right now, it is still in a process of negotiation, as Sotheby's realtor, creatively organizes a committee to "save the house" and murals.  Christopher Wagstaff, author of a recent exhibition catalogue, the exhibition which is touring and currently in Pasadena, having been at the Grey Art Gallery in NYC, and at the Crocker in summer 2013) - unfortunately I was in China.  The exhibition centers on the relationship and work of Robert Duncan, Poet, whose work I greatly admire(and did as a UW student) and in NYC where I heard him read once before his death.  Pauline Kael is a legend and of course, I read her theater reviews, and heard her speak at the Y92 in NYC, in the 70s.  I never knew she started for a decade in Berkeley writing her reviews.  Her correspondence with poet Robert Duncan (1940-1946) has...
Read more