falling & falling & falling & flying looks like falling





I began this painting over a decade ago as a gift for somebody who had changed my life. And then the situation imploded. The implosion had been coming, like a not-silent comet, for a long time. What I had thought I wanted I didn’t. And then I had no choice in the matter. It was, as these things go, all for the best. I finally finished the painting this past year.
‘Sunshine of the Black Bull‘ – 2011 & 2023, acrylic on canvas, 30″ X 22.”


You paint your eyes with infinity
I am becoming a tree
The difference between then and now visible for all to see.
Finite wood struggles in the human heart
Radiating rings enclose the wooden heart
Flowers of infinity bloom
Night falls as it must.
You paint your eyes with springtime beneath the radiating moon
Flowers of infinity bloom.
I aim for the centre of the human heart
I am becoming a tree
I am becoming a tree
The difference between then and now visible for all to see.

His voice reminds me of William Blake’s poetry about children,
or sacrifice in a dark ocean storm, or a sunflower standing against the wind.
Like Guernica or a battlefield nurse
or Christ when they came for him in the garden.
Good father may your telluric chant
be blessed with the speed & power of a thousand
shooting stars.