TRANSMUTATION

I live by the words... “Let it be me!”. I am willing to be changed... utterly changed. Like the caterpillar ( by the way if you haven’t googled caterpillars for awhile take a little moment & do that now... you will be blown away by the weirdness, the diversity, the complexity & the absolute astounding beauty of this the lowliest of creatures) I am surrendering to the necessary process of becoming who I have always been. Surrender. Accept. The glimpse.. the mere glimpse of the Sublime perfection that underpins all that is will sustain you for the rest of your mortal existence. ( by the way if you haven’t googled butterflies for awhile take a little moment.....). Ahhhh... ease back into the easy chair... it is going to be alright.

BUTTERFLY

Open up the circus flap... a zillion dauble down.

Scarlet stipple polka dot... dazzle bluish brown.

Jackson Pollack green the grass with splash of sordid pink.

Gauguin all the poplar leaves & tremble black to kink.

But do not touch the powder white, the fragile wings of flight

Crack the fissure, lava’s fault & molten rupture red.

Icings take the cake or pillows violet on my bed.

Follies light with pastel hue the palest girlish flush.

Shatter bottle green & blue the wine of rosee blush.

But do not touch the powder white, the fragile wings of flight

Tear a strip from noon day sky...  paste to coral reef

Mine the depths of ocean foam... behold the bluest sea.

Tumble , tumble silken rags in the tumble dryer.

First of July on a spangled eve, warblers on a wire.

But do not touch the powder white, the fragile wings of flight

QUEEN OF SWORDS

How do we break the bonds that bind us? How do we sit confident in the throne of ourselves & see with the clarity of the pellucid, blue morning sky? The mind is a glass sword. The rational, balanced vision of an evolved human being using the traditions of knowledge & the methods of science sees the order that needs to exist. There are no maybe’s in that gaze. Music, mathematics, astronomy, reason, rhetoric... the tools the make us of the highest order....  these are the shapes the sword incises in the fabric of the cosmos. Psyche, the unbelievably beautiful butterfly, that lives in each & every one of us, releases its delicate flight. Freedom... true freedom... the freedom of the spirit in the starfields of eternity... is, as always possible.

PISCES

HIGH ROCK PICKEREL

 My teacher & traveling companion Bryan taught  once again the concept of “flow”. It all flows. This is no more apparent to me than in the frigid blue green waters that my spirit guide the pickerel glides through. I am a man of the north. My ancestors are Vikings & Highland Scots. I live in one of the northern most cities of the world.  Winter is my mood & my vision. In my mind’s eye I see the swirl & striation, the strata & shimmer of cold waters. The fish & I know each other. We swim in the same deep stillness. I ease back into the easy chair. I open my fingers. Let the bubbles stream beyond me. I join the flow. I flow. Flow... just flow my friends... that’s all there is... flow...

SANDY LAKE PICKEREL

Ancient watcher of the glacier reef,

I rise as fingerling in the boreal stream,

My spine, the raven spires of forest fires...

My teeth, the jagged shards of grayling sky.

I am silence, stillness, dark, serene.

You sense my presence where I wait beneath.

Spawned from bed rock... grey & icy blue,

My eyes are saucers... summer’s lightning pool.

Silver, gold & green: silver,  gold & green.

Come sink beneath my dreamless dream

The deadfall deep... the space between.

Silver, gold & green;  silver, gold & green.

I belong to black & twisted spruce,

The sap of balsam, my night perfume.

New-fall spiral in winter whisper pine

The warm, the pink ... it’s these I so despise

...chorus

ATHABASCA PICKEREL

The Trout. The Jackfish.The Sturgeon. The Cod. The Salmon. Which is the fish which represents this great land of ours? I would argue the great Canadian fish is in fact the Pickerel. The Wall-Eye. I never knew what this creature looked like till my friend Kimberley asked me to paint one for her husband Brad for Christmas. I looked at about three hundred pictures of this awe-inspiring ancient creature. Wow! Ferocious. Beautiful like Barracuda or Tiger Shark. The spines are poisonous. They are silver & gold & live for decades at the bottom of distant northern lakes. They have nasty teeth & psycho-killer eyes.  The flesh for eating is white as a snow storm in the arctic dark. Delicious. When I think of Canada I think of Pickerel. When I think of Pickerel I think of Canada.