I was hoping to get this piece done by midnight. I am eleven hours early, having rushed its completion, just as I said I DIDN’T want to do (see my previous post, “Throes of Creation”). But that’s a good thing, as I will explain.

Behind the “finished” page is the copy on which I thrashed out the penultimate draft. The missing lines of the acrostic are written wraparound-style outside the right and top page borders.
****
Here Are the Elsewheres

HOPEWARD bound, on wings of raging Flame
Endless Void the Heaven, Sol the Hell
Righteousnesses seem like voodoo games
Empathy the Childe of Beast & Belle
Angst, Begone. Come Progress swift AND slow
RENT from shackling History’s catarrh
Emphasis on Health from head to toe
Then comes TRAVEL meaning-full and far
HOPE is Blissful Silence–just ask these
Everlasting Peacefulness agrees
****
So here, Friends, is a poem in Trochaic Pentameter, ababcdcdee rhyme scheme, all but one pair of lines perfect rhymes, and that one pair of lines varying merely by the difference between Singular and Plural. I am proud. It is a sort of sequel to the decades-old song “After the Gold Rush” by proud “Canarican” (as of January of this year!) Neil Young, which includes the last stanza

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceship flying
In the yellow haze of the sun.
There were children crying and colours flying
All around the chosen one
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun…
Flying Mother Nature’s silver seed
To a new home in the sun.
Flying Mother Nature’s silver seed
To a new home…

Tomorrow, April 22, 2020, is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Neil’s song, and his album of the same name (the lovely word eponymous means “of the same name”) were recorded that same year. So here’s to Neil Young, and also to Dennis Hopper, whose movie The Last Movie (a “follow-up to Easy Rider” according to rock historian Nick Hasted) inspired Mr. Young to write “After the Gold Rush.”

So–why the rush job? I promised an explanation. See, if you look at the drawing/illustration, the middle lines of the poem seem most hastily placed. They are. Two reasons. A, the faster you skate across the (Stonehenge White, thick, super-absorbent) paper with a (Pilot PRECISE V5 Ultra Fine Rolling Ball) pen, the fainter the penstroke appears to the eye, and I wanted to have my cake and eat it too as far as shape-repetition of the floating rectangle-with-cutout was concerned. B) This drawing is a Qualifier, meaning that I deem it worthy of the time and trouble it will take to use it as the basis of a large-scale painting.

Now it’s time to talk, briefly and glowingly, about my ex-wife, Joni.

A couple of months ago Joni was cleaning house, and she had decided that it was a shame that the art supplies she’d acquired during her time of journaling and other creative expression were going fallow. She asked me if I knew of someone who could put them to good use. I nominated myself. And Joni, bless her sweet soul, not only gave me a boatload of art supplies, including a COMPLETE, UNUSED set of acrylic paints, and a FIVE-DRAWER CABINET containing all manner of other media, but she also HELPED ME PUT THEM IN MY APARTMENT. She has not let the dissolution of our marriage interfere with the kindness and compassion she extends to a fellow Creative. But since my acquisition of these fine supplies, I have made sparse use of them–some sculptural enhancement here, some sketching on a pad there. Now–and I will devote Earth Day (and probably beyond) to this endeavor–I will use the paints and brushes she endowed me with to make a more fully realized version of this page.