Moonlight Marine*

Two sail-mastered ships plow
In the heavy dark water,
The moon stares down, guiding

Their journey with a silvered wake.
Ryder, in one brush sweep circles
The moon, pale yellow bloom.

Clouds swirl like banners
Across the brooding night sky,
Main-sails lean before the wind.

Ryder loved Wagner's music and
Here, I feel the tremulous drama
similiar in mood and mystery.

Despite the darkening, cracking
Ryder's spirit triumphs. His
Art is a meditation on our destiny.

Pud Houstoun

*Moonlight Marine is a painting by Albert Pinkham Ryder

After Seeing Clemente's Exhibition

Trees like shooting
Arrows skyward are
Straight along the
Reservoir, not bending

To the spring bound
Round Guggenheim Museum
Where I sit in contemplation
Of his immediacy.

Before the circled windows
A grackle flashes by, a silver
Light, perhaps a jet, hangs in the sky, so still

Yyet floating like Clemente's
sweeping oil, "Semen"

Pud Houstoun

White Canvas

Before a white canvas-
A distance to go opens to me.
A wisp of inspiration flies by.

Attempting to grasp it, not knowing
Where it will lead, I rush
To discover the image evolving.

Immediacy is important to capture
The essence of something yet
To be born. No escape after that

Instantaneous brush stroke. I'm
In suspension, awaiting recognition
of the unknown, unknown till now.

Pud Houstoun

Breaking Day (Painting)

Something woke me, and there
Reflected from a city window
The red sun skipping across my

Studio to bathe my latest
Painting in a surprising glow.

It had been "desespoir" in
Bringing this painting
To its final stage, but

There it was and true:
The reds, oranges, yellows,
Touches of blue.

It seemed nature had joined me
In a search to express a mood.

Pud Houstoun

Moon Cove (painting)

The sand drifts red
under the harvest moon.

The sea, not perturbed,
lies opaque, indifferent.

Heedless of reflection,
drowns the ancient shipwrecks-

Buried deep with forgotten lives.

Pud Houstoun

Patinir's St. Jerome

On the way to my St. Jerome library,
I step on red paint in the subway
And carry it a short way toward the train.
Red is the color from the sky
I remember most in Patinir's great painting
Where jerome, who became a saint mostly
For translating the Bible, sees a rock
Which reminds one of the chest
He must have beaten endlessly in frustration.
Baring breast, beating, and shouting "Alas"
Sounds like a chapter from my life
Which rarely ends but has it's intermissions.
Sometimes I have encountered joy
In or near the Met Museum Watson Library
Where I hunt books by title or number.
Talk of judgeing book by cover, this is. . .
There goes my internal non-saint Jerome, again,
Plainting away about what he does and doesn't have
Amidst a strangely Chinese-looking landscape
On his knees and out in the heat, as usual.
At least, the camels know how to smile.
Wake up the heart, St. Jerome. Your self-pity
Hour ended when you woke this morning and asked: "Why?"
Cover yur chest again and leave that rock alone.
The sky has your number, now. So do I.
You only became a priest at others' insistence.
You said it wasn't your vocation but obeyed.
During a four year long vacation from America,
I wanted to become a Theravadin Buddhist monk
And applied. I was told epileptics were barred
From all but novitiate service to the Void.
Your impasse was the reverse of mine.
But I commend your rigor
Even if it led you to this tree-y outcrop where I see you.
Your anguish looks strangely calm as you kneel.
Will you accept my hands and arms to raise you?
The sky and those camels await us.
Come along.