A premiere …

There is, in our patio garden, a steel sculpture by David Tothero called The General. Not long after it was installed I began a sequence of poems inspired by it. Then I thought it might be nice to do a video of it, with me reading excerpts from the poem sequence. David took a bunch of photos, and I asked my friend John Timpane — a fine poet himself — to provide some musical accompaniment. Finally, my peerless tech advisor Laura Mikowychok put it all together. The text of the excerpts is below the video. The whole sequence can be found here.

To lead demands a good deal

More than issuing commands:

Orders may be traced to stars —

Angles, surfaces, curves and planes

Forged within a molten core

Spun from the sun.

It is the antagonist

One waits and watches for,

Not the enemy. One must focus

On technique and form, be ready

To accept defeat or claim

Victory, time and again,

With equal grace, until

The final contest bears down,

Like a wave in the dark.

Cannon bursts echo

Exploding stars, and the planet’s heart

Flows liquid as the sun’s flame.

Light bends, space curves.What

Strategy or tactics may we devise

Equal to the charges we are made of?

These bones lay scattered

Until a knowing hand gathered

And assembled them as now

They stand. We are all

Assemblages of lines

Whether straight or bending,

Tempered well or ill,

Random scraps found

To mix and haply match.

Angles soften in moonlight,

Curves grow supple. In darkness 

We renew ourselves, but in sunlight

Stiffen, like stalks bracing

Themselves against the wind,

Though the air be still.

Those in the know

Or thought to be

Claim light divides

Into color. Notice, though,

This blue shaping

The shade of morning

Amid the budding green,

Colors in consort

Nourishing the light.