mid-day in winter

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The sun flashes white

On the crow as it flies

And it climbs over treetops

In the bright winter sky

.

And the ice on the creektop

Is silver and blue

And beneath winter’s crust

The slow stream bubbles through

fight

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Joseph E Bird

I didn’t want to hit him.

I had nothing against him. No malice, no hard feelings of any kind. He had done me no harm.

It surprised me when he took that first swing. His eyes wild, hopped up on something, sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes.

I leaned back a little, dipped to the right and easily dodged his looping attempt to take my head off.

It surprised me even more how quickly he took his second swing, this one coming from his left. It caught me in the neck and knocked me back. It didn’t hurt, but I knew right then I’d have to hit him.

He kept coming at me, wailing away as I covered my head, his punches landing on my arms. Then he stopped.

I peaked out between my arms and saw him standing there, his hands by his side, gasping for…

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Donnie Burford

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Inasmuch as Shelton College is a liberal arts institution, we recognize not only local writers but also – as of today, at least – visual artists as well.  Our first hat tip goes to Donnie Burford, a young man I know from church.  He’s a Saint Albans dweller and has been painting for a little while now and – as I think he would admit – is still in his formative stages as an artist.

I don’t recommend every local artist I see and I don’t recommend every artist whom I know, but Donnie caught my eye through a recent Facebook post.   That post featured a painting of a man sitting on a rock in a trout stream, fixing some tackle to his rod.   The work in general is very pleasant and praiseworthy – it catches the subtle light and color tones that are unique to mountain streams.  I think one of the reasons so many people love trout fishing is the immersion in the beauty of these hard-to-reach environments and it’s a credit to Donnie that he’s captured a bit of that rare world in this painting.

 

Here, with permission, is Donnie’s painting:

 

 

 

Around the same time I first saw this one, I was taking another look at some of Joni Mitchell’s paintings.  She did one of Charley Mingus that is famous and I’ve got to say that Donnie’s work here compares favorably to it.  In fact, I see a similarity in the color shades and the forms.

Here is Joni’s painting of Mingus:

 

 

But the thing that most impressed me about Donnie’s painting was the detail of the fisherman’s face.  You see, I know that guy.  He’s Donnie’s father and I would have recognized him in the painting, even if I had not known who painted it.  It’s just something about the lines in his face, particularly his mouth, which Donnie got just right with one stroke of the pen or brush.  For my money, the ability to do that is what separates the real artist from the wannabe.  Joni Mitchell could do it, of course.  In just a few lines she could give us a portrait of Neil Young that was immediately recognizable.

 

 

 

Donnie’s painting of his father is evidence that Donnie has that same talent.

Let’s have more.

From Joe Bird

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Do your thing.

This young man is my father.
The photo was taken in the early days of his career as an electrical engineer.

In many ways, he is the stereotypical engineer.  He’s analytical.  He’s a logical problem solver.  He pays attention to detail.  He would be considered a left-brain thinker.  Creative types – your artists, musicians, actors, dancers – are generally considered right-brian thinkers.  If you think with the left side of your brain, you’d make a good engineer.  If you think with the right side, you might be a good writer.  And for much of what I remember about my father, this would seem to hold true.

When I was growing up, I never remember him doing anything very creative.  He was very much an engineer, and was a great (if sometimes intimidating) teacher of math and science to me and my sisters.

Most of his career he worked for Union Carbide and when they began to build new production facilities in Texas, he was transferred to Houston.  My family moved to Texas twice, and when he was sent to Houston for a third time, he opted to go it alone and not put the family through another move. So what does an engineer living by himself do in his spare time?

Golf?  Maybe jigsaw puzzles?  No.  He took up painting.  When he returned home we were astounded by what he had done. Among other things, he painted this scene of the old Morgan homestead near Winfield (WV), across from what is now the John Amos power plant.

As far as I know, he had never painted anything before.  There were other paintings, including a very lifelike portrait of Pittsburgh Steeler great, Mean Joe Green.

But when he came back home, he was done with painting.

In the 4o-some years since, he’s completed home improvement projects and done some woodworking, but not much that would label him as a creative type.

Then last year, my sister suggested to our then 86-year-old father that he should do pencil sketches of his great-grandchildren. He agreed.  Here’s one of the twins, Bear.

For most of his life, my father has played the role of engineer.  He is still very practical and analytical, and his fondness for logic would make Mr. Spock proud. And then he’ll surprise us with those sparks of creativity that seem to come forth every forty years or so.

Lessons in all of this?

Don’t sell yourself short. You may not even realize the potential within.  Do your thing.

Too old? Nope. That just doesn’t cut it. Do your thing.

It will make your life better.

 

 

 

 

Joseph E Bird

Author archive Author website

12 thoughts on “Do your thing.”

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Morning Ride in January

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Out where the snow and ice have melted

and the creeks rush brown and high

and the shaggy crows perch in ghostly sycamores

and fly out like exploding shrapnel as we roll silently beneath.

.

There the resting fields are soggy and the scent of the earth

lifts from its opened pores and the cattle stand and stare

and we glide past houses old and new, small and great

sweating up hillsides and then coasting down like reckless children

Screaming as we go

.

copyright 2017

Morning Poem, December 31, 2016

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.

Oh, how I would love to see sunshine

The ancients said that it fed the soul

And I believe them

.

The new moderns say that it feeds the mind

And I believe them

And in the gloom of winter we are emptied of joy

.

The fringe-folk say that it feeds the body!

Those in India who survive on sunlight and water

As if capable of photosynthesis

And I believe them

copyright 2016

Book Review: The Crossing

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C.S. Lewis, in his book An Experiment in Criticism, asserts that there are two kinds of readers in the world. There are those who read to “find out what happens,” and for them once a book is completed the fun is over. They don’t re-read; what would be the point?

For the other type of reader, the first time through a good book is just an introduction.  This kind of reader will have books that they will read over and over throughout their lifetimes.  They will linger over favorite paragraphs and passages like others will linger over a glass of fine wine.  This sort of reader will memorize lines and scenes and find himself repeating them in appropriate moments – or maybe just repeating them.

I must be of the second kind.  One of the reasons I know that is Cormac McCarthy.  I first started reading him in 1992 when All The Pretty Horses was first published.  I was forty years old then, married, with children, a law degree and a litigation practice.  But in one way, before I read McCarthy, I was a kind of virgin.  Although I was fairly well read by then, I had never encountered an author who did to me what All The Pretty Horses did.  I fought him at first.  The obscure sentences, the lack of quotation marks in dialogue, the long segments in Spanish untranslated, and the word here and there that sent me to the dictionary.

But I stuck with it long enough to be pulled in.  And that is not too strong a description for what happened to me.  Partly because his style forces you to focus so closely and partly because he so profoundly and subtly captures landscapes and scenes and characters and interactions between characters, I was drawn into the story – no, drawn into his world – as surely and maybe even more deeply as if I had been transported to west Texas in the early 1940s.  I had heard that great literature makes you so aware of another world that you learn to appreciate the real world all the more.  That happened with me.  McCarthy described the forests and mountains and valleys of west Texas and then Mexico so vividly that I gained a new appreciation for the mountains and streams of West Virginia, where I live.  He revealed the thoughts and intents of young men’s hearts so faithfully and so strongly that I became more aware and understanding of my own.

After reading All The Pretty Horses, I waited two years for the promised sequel and when it came I dove into it like I had once devoured the newest Beatles or Creedence album.  Of the three works in the Border Trilogy, the second – The Crossing – gets the fainter praise.

But I picked the book up again just the other day and it was like hearing a poignant and almost-forgotten symphony.  In the first three or four pages I was so carried away that I remembered why it is that I read.  I read for the very thing this book affords.  It is haunting, engaging, evocative, mesmerizing, enchanting.  It sees and communicates the beauty of the surface and it sees and imparts the deeper beauty and horror of the emotion and motives that are beneath the surface.  There are not three pages anywhere in literature that move and transport me the way these first few paragraphs do.  There is simply nothing else like it.

 

copyright 2016

David Hannan

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Shelton College Quarterly welcomes a new contributor, Mr. David Hannan. This poem originally appeared in Marshall University’s Et Cetera magazine.

Plato’s Academy

Replace a toga
With holey blue Dickies overalls
Sandals
With sole-less Walmart moccasins
Olives
With jalapeño cheese Munchies
And the Greek amphitheater
With my grandfather’s garage

Amidst the aroma of spray paint
Stale Columbian coffee
And greasy Suzi’s biscuits
I absorbed the arguments of old men

From petty politics to polemics
Pontiacs to Buicks
Cosmology and Corvettes;
From Indian deities
To Oldsmobile leather seats,
Their words spilled amongst the oil on the floor

My grandfather, a man who could bend words
As well as fenders
Welded me into an academic

When his friends would trickle out
Like the last drops of coffee
Our dialectic would begin
Question and answer
Until one was silent

The man who never hugged my father,
Who recoiled from a touch
Reached out
And embraced me with his mind
To try and make me Aristotle.
Coyright 2016

Overtime: A Basketball Parable (chapter 30)

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Here’s Chapter 30.  You can buy the book by clicking here.

30.

AND REST DOES COME TO ME NOW, in a way that I have not felt since I have been stuck on this bench. More than that. I have not rested so fully, so completely, since I was a child. I come to full awareness of my surroundings again as the day comes to an end and I anticipate, once again, the sad frustration of Sparks and Murphy. But with this deep rest I am renewed and now restless in a way that I have not been since I have been here. I feel more now like I might have felt during my days as a coach. I sense my confinement and long to move and engage and make some impact. I allow myself to wonder and to hope that the confessions I have made to Kelso and his forgiveness of me may work some change in this evening’s shadowy drama.

When they appear, the change that is apparent is not in Sparks, but in Murphy. His image is the fainter and more blurred of the two, but the change in his movement is unmistakable. Between shots he looks directly at me. Until this evening, I had absolutely no reason to believe that either of the boys even knew I was here, but between shots Murphy looks directly at me. It is unmistakable. He knows I am here and in his look he is trying to communicate something. It is indecipherable to me, in part because I have taught myself to ignore Murphy’s facial expressions. I know that they are never real. But what about now? Why this change?

And then Murphy breaks the infernal monotony. He grabs a rebound off of the rim and instead of whipping the ball back to Sparks, he bends down and rolls the ball down the length of the court, to me. The ball rolls slowly, but it comes directly toward my bench. I look up from the rolling ball to Murphy, but he has disappeared. Sparks is standing alone, twenty feet from the rim, waiting for the ball to be given back to him.

It is not the product of any conscious decision or struggle, but as the ball comes within my reach I leave the bench and pick it up. I feel strangely empowered, as if I were in the strength of my youth and I do the only thing possible. I walk the length of the court, dribbling the ball.

With each step, Mark Sparks’ figure grows more definite, more solid, more real. When he recognizes me he drops his head and I can see tears falling onto the court.

Hey, Mark. I say. I think I know what you’re doing wrong here. I’m ready to start this conversation by telling him to use his legs more, to trust the old high-arch he used to put through, time after time.

He shakes his head and struggles to speak and finally says, “I know. It’s not what I am doing wrong, it’s what I have done wrong. I know what I did wrong. I disrespected you. I turned my back on you and all you did for me.   Then I did it again. You gave me a chance. I should not have done it. There was no call for it. No justification for it. I should have apologized before, but I was hurt and proud and I just hated you more and more. I am sorry. So very sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

At this, the twenty-three year old kid drops to his knees, sobbing. I take his hand and bring him back up and turn him again toward the basket. “This is over, I say. I forgive you. It’s over. There is nothing more to it. Now, straighten back up and let’s see that famous shot of yours again. Use your legs, Mark.”   I bounce the ball to him and watch him resume that odd stance and the steady eye on the rim and he almost smiles and sends the ball aloft and it swishes through the crummy net.

I corral the ball and instead of throwing it back to him, I hold it and walk back in front of him. “There’s one more thing,” I tell him. “One more thing that we have to settle. I did you wrong, too.”

He looks surprised and confused and makes no response.

“You know that business with Furman?”

“Yeah. I heard about it. That’s what I could have had. If I had just come to see you. I know. I was stupid. Really stupid. I don’t know why I did it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have heard about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I should not have talked about it. It was nobody’s business but ours. I was wrong to let it out. I did it for bad reasons, selfish reasons. Nobody else should have ever heard about it. Your dad. Nobody.”

“But then I wouldn’t have known what I missed.”

“Might have been better off that way.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I needed to be here. I needed to make this apology. Might never have done it otherwise.”

“Well, that’s something we’ll never know. But we won’t need to.   I just need you to forgive me.

“I forgive you. If I hadn’t been stupid, you’d a never been put in that situation.

“Doesn’t matter. Wrong is still wrong.

“Here, one more.” I toss him the basketball.

I know what is coming, but I am still surprised to see it. Sparks takes the ball and fires a high-arching twenty-two footer that rips the net and he disappears. I gather the ball in and with a mixture of overwhelming and conflicting emotions I head back to my place on the bench.

copyright 2015

JOSEPH E. BIRD

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December 14, 2014

Sid

By Joseph E Bird

Author’s Notes:  These are true memories that I wanted to get down before they drift away.  It’s written in a poetic style because my memories come to me in a sporadic, fragmented way.  My dad, who admonished us to stay off the hump, would say it’s not a poem because it doesn’t rhyme.  Let’s call it poetic expression.

---

Sid
by Joseph E Bird
Copyright 2014

A Sunday afternoon drive.
Like so many before.
We called it the country
though I know now
it was just outside of town.

A two-lane highway
heavy with tractor trailers,
me and my sisters pestering
each other in the back seat.

We would stand on the floor
and watch through the windshield.
Get off the hump, my dad would say.
We had worn the carpet
to bare metal.

The house was huge,
but it was tired and worn.
Bees buzzed from their hives
within the front porch posts.
Sheet metal was nailed over
the holes in the wooden steps.

There was an aroma
of old wood
soft wood
wet wood.
Earth shady from giant oaks.
And dogs.

Always family.
Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.
All there to see Mom and Sid Morgan.
The oldest people I had ever known.
Ancient and intriguing,
they loved having everybody visit.

Open gas fires
and peeling paint on the walls.
Linoleum coming up from the floor.
So many rooms.
Upstairs,
where no one goes.
An unfinished oil painting
on an easel
in the parlor.

And the museum.
A.S. Morgan’s life.
Alligators.
The two-headed calf.
A bald eagle.
The wheel of West Virginia trees.
Cannonballs.

Finally their lives could not go on,
the house could no longer stand.
Nature has reclaimed the land,
the museum was moved
and moved again.

It’s a hollow shell of what it was.
When I see it now,
it’s hard to think of Sid
or any of the rest of the family.
When my generation passes,
so will the legacy of
Albert Sidney Morgan.