One of the Fallen

They took down all the trees. It was over quickly, their slow life was ended by a few bulldozers. I grew up with them. I crawled into their limbs as an escape. I hid near their roots when I needed a reprieve the regular world. I imagined their conversations as the wind pushed itself through their leaves. They were my secret garden, a microcosm of all of the great forests I would someday visit and find familiar. Today these memories represent ghosts. A severed shell remains of them. Sitting cut on the cool night grass; they are slowly dying.

Dance

Good luck with the first molt.
To see the love of your life turn indifferent to your affections during the long hot summer, only to come back to you in the fall will teach you something about hawks and yourself. And do not be surprised if you come to love autumn more then before.

-The Falconer's Apprentice William C. Oakes

We have come to the edge of the woods,
out of brown grass where we slept, unseen,
out of knotted twigs, out of leaves creaked shut,
out of hiding.

At first the light wavered, glancing over us.
Then it clenched to a fist of light that pointed,
searched out, divided us.
Each took the beams like direct blows the heart answers.
Each of us moved forward alone.

...It is their turn now,
their turn to follow us. Listen,
they out down their equipment.
It is useless in the tall brush.

And now they take the first steps, now knowing
how deep the woods are and lightless.
How deep the woods are.

- Jacklight by Louise Erdrich

I can only tell you that my motivation has tanked out on me. I am finding it difficult to continue my painting and I am sitting here looking at it and wanting it to be more then it will be. I am a bit nervous about my lack of drive, it is a dangerous place to be in.

I find my peers are in a different place and I am in need of a good art conversation. So I will have a nice chat with this painting and hate every minute of its making. I will hate the paint, the brushes, the sound of it, and the realization that I am about to fall upon my own failure if I cannot keep up with an impossible schedule. So I am pushed ahead by my will but so much of me is reluctant. I just want to stop thinking and sit for a while. I am reaching for something but I am not sure what. Every moment I exist feels spoken for, when does it give back?

So I say Art mocks itself....

"In the future, whose idea of beauty and order will be in public spaces? That is perhaps the greatest question we have to face. You can look at a landscape and you can see it as perfect in itself. Or you can look at it as undeveloped land. Those are two very different points of view. Who will make the public art in that space?"

-Judith Baca

I said your name today
it was a rush of wind
upon my lips
bringing forth a
contorted face as I
tried to hide the weight
it flew from me
and created its own wings


-by the corbyhawk herself

The Dalliance of Eagles

SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.

Walt Whitman

Melting Tundra

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6098974

Goodbye river, the sweet smell, the curling waves around my oars as I row, peace for a moment, and I am free to be nothing at all but a passenger on its back. Your sanctuary will be dearly missed.

I

Strings of the Earth and air
Make music sweet;
Strings by the river where
The willows meet.

There’s music along the river
For love wanders there,
Pale flowers on his mantle,
Dark leaves on his hair.

All softly playing,
With head to music bent,
And fingers straying
Upon an instrument.

-James Joyce

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,

-The Love Song of J. ALfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

Future Home of: XYZ company+ rats, crows, gulls, and mice

Former Home of: shrikes, field sparrows, goldfinches, deer, opossum, bobolinks, red-winged blackbirds, monarch butterflies, etc....


Response to painted message on car that read: Jesus Loves You

What gave you the authority to pre-suppose that?

This is a reactionary work
clever pun
signifier for a cultural issue
a reference to pop culture
the cult of identity
an abstract cliche
worship at the shrine of beauty
anti-(insert subject here)


..........

9-11

I remember standing in the breakroom where I was working. We were all watching the TV as the news media struggled to put a clear frame around what was going on. The second plane hit as we stood and I turned to a friend and said, "this means war."
After the pentagon was hit we began to feel fear, suddenly no place was safe and we were close to a potential target. Nothing really ever was the same.
I remember how so many people changed in small ways. There was a solidarity that remained for a brief time but was lost. When I was placing flags in my front yard a few days after the attack, so many people honked their horns in a show of support.

The question is how far have we come since then as a Nation?

The Goose

The capture

She slept hidden under the tree, but I noticed her. Her left wing sitting oddly; her shape unbalanced. She was also alone.

I had seen her a few days ago, when I was in transit from work to work so to speak. All of my time now consumed by deadlines and responsibilities, but she gave me a moment’s pause as I considered her.

I left her twice because I knew she was not going to be saved. The angle of that wing was too dramatic, it hung from her like a banner. Today is Sunday and I was on my way home from my studio. I had already had a meeting and am even now postponing more work I must get to. Still, I knew what I must try to do. I turned around and bought a container for her to ride in.

Now a catch of a semi-flighted bird that can swim well near water is a daunting task with a crew of people. I was stuck with just my own self to manage it.

I tested her by walking directly up to her. I knew she would be off balance and clumsy with her broken wing. I was hoping she was so tired and out of it (we call it ‘down’) that I could just grab her as she lay there.

She stood assessing me as a threat and began to hiss. All of her feathers stood on her neck as she swayed her head back and forth. We became one in our concentration, she to get into the water and me to keep her from the water. I stood between her and the muddy pond. If she reached it there would be no way I could catch her. She knew this and began to run using her good wing to give her speed.

I ran as well in singular purpose, to prevent her from getting into the water.

We danced; she and I, each of us mirroring the other in anticipation of the next move, left or right. I cannot describe it in rational words how I can read the slightest turn of the head or lift of feather to know where the bird is going. It is not part of my “modern” brain. It is some deeper place that language does not go to. There is no room in it for regular thought, it goes ahead of it controlling every muscle as I ran side to side. My body was pushed forward by my will. I can’t really recall when I have ever ran and dodged that fast.

In a catch one of you will make a mistake. You have to watch for it, a stumble the body weakening just a bit. Your window is small because otherwise the mistake will become yours and the game is up.

She tripped, falling on her chest as she forgot for a moment that one of her wings would not help her balance. I grabbed her then, hearing her hiss. She briefly struggled away and I caught her again.

Unlike some birds geese do not ever give up. Swans do, they realize the game is up and they just gently give in. This goose was determined to get free of me. I held on with my heart pounding and my lungs reminding me that they were still not quite healed after my bad illness this past spring.

Panting I got her in the container and closed the lid. My jaw hurt from the rush of adrenaline that must have helped me run faster. Now she is here for a brief span before she goes to be humanely euthanized. Which is a better death then slowly starving under that tree alone.

You stand here in my place
Feel the warmth upon your face
Stand back and start to smile
You now have time, you now have will.

I would never want to leave this country
Where roads are fast and knowledge easy.
I would never want to take you with me
Unless you're open and trust my hand.

I would never wish this much on you
When what you have might be enough.
I would never want to drive that fast
Unless you're ready, willing, happy.

Take me away from these simple feelings I know
There's places on the other sides of here.
Take me away from these simple feelings I know,
I'll take that car and drive there faster.

Drive That Fast -Kitchens of Distinction

and you too could have this at your home

Ok, but really...bronzed baby poop
I like the not Dada but doodoo reference; it is rather hi-brow.

http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=19443

He looked into her eyes and saw the stars
Though staring does not satisfy desire

-Ovid Metamorphoses

White- Tailed Ptarmigan

Hold on honey, there's a new dawn coming
and a big bird to sweep you away
Are you born yet? Are you listening?
Are you sick of staring at the walls?
Are you hungry? Are you angry?
Are you wondering if there is anyone at all?
Hold on honey there's a new dawn coming
and a big bird to sweep you away

-Cowboy Junkies

intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;



-Robinson Jeffers

The King

steller's jay, northern mockingbird, long-billed curlew, great egret, blackburnian warbler, mountain chickadee, glossy ibis, rough-legged hawk, trumpeter swan, belted kingfisher, sooty tern, royal albatross, limpkin, snow goose, brown creeper, northern waterthrush, european blackbird, carrion crow, king vulture, andean condor, scarlet tanager, manx shearwater, north polar skua....

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men.

-Edward R. Murrow

On top of the world

swallow boom burb

It's happening everywhere; commercial and housing development, along with the road network need to suport it, is the single greatest pressure on natural landscapes in the United States, and by its very pervasiveness the hardest to control. Between 1982 and 1997, developed land in the forty-eight contiguous states increased by 25 million acres- meaning a quarter of all the open land lost since the European settlement disappeared in those fifteen years. This isn't a trend, it is a juggernaut, and the worst may be yet to come. At this pace, by 2025 there will be 68 million more rural acres in development, an area about the size of Wyoming, and the total developed land in the United States will stand at a Texas-sized 174 million acres. Already, just the impervious covering we put on the land, the things like roads, sidewalks, and buildings we pave with asphalt or concrete, add up to an area the size of Ohio.

...led Dolores Hayden, a professor of architecture and American studies at Yale, to compile a new lexicon by which to describe it, including a "boom burb" (for a fast growing suburb), "zoom burb" (for one growing even faster), "LULU" (Locally Unwanted Land Use), and "litter on a stick" (billboards).

-Scott Weidensaul
Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul

rain rain go away,
come again another day...

from my mother, who got it from her mother...

last weekend of freedom = rain rain rain rain rain rain rain

resourceful

love or hate them, ring-billed gulls have adapted well to modern times

looking

went out to find the Manx Shearwater along with everyone else, but he was not there

Echo

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

-Christina Rossetti