The Narrative Image

Wind racing over the waters Careening around canyon corners Ice cold waves leap with delight ...Idiot kayaker, not so much High desert mountains Try on a flimsy spring dress of sheer green Teasing again Blooming flowers witness  The grass being whipped Trembles in the shredding wind Curious clouds Sniff alien contrails As they scurry by  I don't think flowers Often experience existential dread But you never know  Before the gale Flickering like bright yellow Daylight fireflies  In a symphony of windblown grass There's no telling which baton Belongs to the conductor There's those flowers again Acting all happy And shit Shy plants looking back and away All the time nodding consent to nothing in particular  Surveying the dead and wounded At the end of the grass battle In memory of those Who dared to show their faces to the sun Hey flowers! Suck it! ...

Note: Larger versions of posted pictures can be accessed simply by clicking on the images “Ladies and Gentlemen, I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man. Thank you.” Dr. Hoenikker's Nobel Prize acceptance speech (in its entirety) Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut Old jealous corn skeletons stand in disciplined rows - sheathed in brittle armor – and make their last stand against the rising forces of spring. Water percolates into the earth The clouds … like swaddling cloths. Birds draw arrows in the sky…eventually Save for the grass-stained chin, I frequently see this expression at the daily 10 o’clock scheduling meeting. It was Mr. T who saw Bill Monroe’s bird watching article in the March 18 th Oregonian – an article that chronicles the current s...

Those animals that could, followed the sun south. Those that couldn't burrowed into the ground and went to sleep. Immobile trees jettisoned their canopies and learned to bend before the savage winds of winter. And all the while, the Earth continued its NASCAR-like journey around the sun, completing yet another lap and speeding on to the next.  Standing at the east end of Smith lake, I prepare to launch from the 'new' kayak and canoe ramp that Metro put into place several years ago in deference to the wishes of the rare painted turtles who preferred to keep their slough private. It is cold and dark and calm. The clouds have granted a temporary reprieve and opened the sky to the stars. All night, whatever heat was collected from the previous day has been radiating out into space - no water vapor blankets to insulate the earth. There is a feeling, perhaps a noise - an announcement that the sun will be rising before it actually rises. Perhaps the air beyond the hori...