Silence

Let the silence press;

Enveloping,

Like a rising dough filling a bowl.

Until the gentlest breeze

Creates the worst racket,

Your own growling stomach,

Tribal drums

And the tentative hoots of an owl

A circus parade.

 

© TDR – 2018

 

The Mud Smith’s Home

Someone curious once asked, “Are you a Gypsy?”
“No. But I work with mud.” He replied.


A peacock called Bukowski
lives with him on top a knoll
where brick kilns loom like Celtic altars.
The shards of failed pots pave the way
to where we shared coffee and strange tales.

Inside the house
the walls display clay mugs
and plates scrawled
with symbols of no special device
which invite, then defy translation.

We strolled and spoke as freely
as old friends again meeting,
while two lazy bees still sluggish from winter
drifted weightily about our heads
sweetly buzzing with Swedenborg and Gurdjieff.

As we looked at the patch of field
where the Gypsies once camped,
we wondered
if they would come back.
He said, “I would tell them
‘I work with mud’
And if they didn’t already know
I’d show them how.”

-By Gerald Musinsky

A few years ago, on a different blog, I wrote an appreciation of my friend Gerry upon his death a decade before. I found this while going through some ancient papers from when we worked together on a New Plays Festival. He had scribbled notes on the back of the typed copy. I don’t know if this was ever published as my copy of his “Steel Living” is…misplaced somewhere on the four floors among the hundreds of books that give me some structure. Assume it’s here somewhere unless one of the girls took off with it as an artifact of a place and time. If not them, I blame the cats. They are clever imps and spend too much unsupervised time wandering the stacks. Pretty sure Lohman can read-he plays dumb, but I’m not buying.