December 20, 2019

Winter Solstice—Farewell to Adolescence

“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.”                                                                                                      Frederick Douglass
 “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  Yogi Berra

As the year winds down we turn the page on the 21st Century’s teen years. The nascent century is about to leave adolescence, a time of transition from youth to maturity, as we come of age and enter the 20’s.

In a sense we are the 21st Century’s parents—still trying to figure out how to nurture this budding entity and guide it on the path to do what’s right—establish moral values, embrace empathy, and ensure that its future will offer equality and justice for all.





If we fail as parents and our progeny aren't able to shake this current decline, we will have set the course of history on a tailspin that will take years to recover.

The moral compass of the country is wavering. Is the Earth’s magnetic field strong enough to right the course—or will the potential energy wane and spin out of control? 


As we celebrate the last winter solstice of the "teen years," let us take the time and effort to challenge destiny, take heed of our moral compass, and navigate this fork in the road.



Midlife 
by Jeff Key     

From inside out the core stretches upward, reaching for the sky—expecting to become what it wasn’t yesterday.

A new shoot blanketed with monochrome aspirations,
explores foreign territory—its first bud cut short by a recalcitrant winter.

Rust-colored leaves descend in a vacillating free fall, twisting and craning for one last look at the stem that held them in its grasp, bound by memories, 
lost in a stream defined by ambiguous currents.

Each tick refines a stone, cut and shaped under the guise of an unconscious tremor, rippling with indifference, buried, resuscitated and then discarded.

Translucent skin bends and folds with a starboard slant—yawing on an uncharted course, calling for a return to moist mornings filled with desire and an urgent call to forget.

Creased sheets wrap tentative limbs, swaddled with fury, caught in the glint of an innocent eye. 

The howling night repeats a mournful dirge for the neglected offspring of the summer wind, born with heat on their lips and a short-sighted glance at the future pounding in their ears.

A finger, throbbing with neuralgia, strains to make marks on a blank page
pocked with frayed holes that bore inward with the breath of a twice told tale—
unfinished but filled with promise. 

November 19, 2019

Thanksgiving—Churchill’s Butterflies

“ ‘Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot.
Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding."
—Alice Walker


This month we celebrate Thanksgiving—a holiday that began when the Pilgrims supposedly sat down to a meal in 1621 with Native Americans to commemorate the fall harvest. (**see note below to consider the Native American perspective.)

It’s also a time to reflect on how we treat others and to give thanks for the right to live, love, play, work, and worship in whatever manner we choose. 


Thanksgiving is an opportune time to discuss how many people in the world do not have these rights, how historically people have been denied these rights, and what we can do to bring justice to those who have suffered in the past and those who are currently suffering.



The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home.   Winston Churchill


Winston Churchill, champion of the British victory in WWII, voted the “Most Respected Person” in England, and whose birth is celebrated on November 30, was known, despite his heroic deeds, to treat people from India, Africa, and the Arab world in a derogatory manner.

Like Churchill, our current President, through his comments and actions, demeans and discriminates against people who are trying to find a better life where they can embrace the freedoms that most people in the Western world are privileged to experience.

(** Many Native Americans call Thanksgiving a “Day of Mourning.”  A plaque at Cole Hill, the first Mayflower Pilgrim cemetery, gives voice to Native Americans and reads— Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture.”)



Détente—the relaxation of strained relations  






    Churchill’s Butterflies

Their wings touch my brush strokes
with a flutter that tickles my brow.

Their pupae grow and take on new lives
as airborne creatures free to roam the earth.

Their hunger feeds on my impasto as it builds
layers that bore into the recesses of my mind.

Is the Aryan stock bound to triumph?
How do we stop the Germans?
What does Stalin really want?
How will I hold power after the war?
Should India be partitioned?
Does Clementine know when the “black dog” will strike next?

My life has been privileged—
I hold the destiny of nations in my hands.

But the simple movement of wings,
the wonder of flight, and the swatch of
color streaking across my canvas
take me to a place where lines never converge
and stillness blurs the edges.

by Jeff Key