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Adalbert is a forum for me, to post ephemera, photography, poetry, occasional travel notes, and various spontaneous motions. Cover photo: Parsonage where my great-grandfather spent his early years. Taken near Liegnitz, Silesia, ca. 1870. The "xothique" portion of the web address is a nod to Clark Ashton Smith's fictional continent of Zothique.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Bäume

 
 
 
 
 
Painting: Bäume, 1986
 
 
Acclivity
 
 
Bracken and colourless grasses nod in the precipice, always dark and upward, not struck by the sun.  The past, and arched bridge over the gulph of river shade, black fishes, and granite.   Only the half-apprehension of lightless bulk or upper land.
 
Musky imminence, the wood outside window and door, moth and coal oil.  Unaccountable stains of the whitened moon:  straw ridges and imperial alder.
 
Brow of boulder or hemlock, apparent on top of walls of  boughs susurrus -- standing in places just like that. Steeping ruddiness and a sadness, clumped and lit grasses, from the narrow ledge.  Wasted and snapped trees.  Palaeogean skirting, busy air of huckleberry and toadstool, dipping way of the road over.
 
An one blanched and shivered tree-crown, appearing through a gap in the rocks, height of hawk and golden bee.
 
A great staircase made in the summit, the summer-house no longer about, movement of clouds building and lifting down the mountain in the removed, brink, moss-shoared pond:  ovine and clotted rocks.
 
JF ca. 1990


2 comments:

  1. I like the wording of the poem, Jonathan, did you do the painting?

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  2. Thanks Ray, the poem was based partly on associations with Larch Mountain, which is a nearby extinct volcano. And yes, the painting is mine, done in acrylic a long time back -- I was inspired by some of the expressionist painters.

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