Changing Focus

When life overwhelms

Focus on what’s important

Nature’s beauty calls

This has been great painting weather. Today I found an old painting I did back in 2013. It was a black swallowtail from my garden on a 4′ x 5′ canvas. I liked the painting but it was too big for anyone to be interested in, so I cut it down to 31″ x 48,” leaving just he butterfly, and used the top half for another painting I did last year. I had the canvas stored rolled up and it had a couple of places that were damaged, so i decided to remount what was left and touch it up. It turned into a greater restoration than I expected, but I like the end results.

Butterfly Painting – Dwight L. Roth

Best Food Around

Great Pork Bar-B-Que

Whole hog cooked on hot charcoal

Fall Pig Pickin’ time

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Painting – Dwight L. Roth

Finding Lunch

Last week the heat of summer went down to the low eighties, so I decided to dabble in my painting again for a change. I paint in my garage, so I don’t get much done in the middle of the summer. I decided to paint a Blue Heron wading in the shallows looking for food.

Blue Heron wades through marsh

Eyeing green frogs’ slight movements

Crawdads hide in muck

*****

Blue Heron Painting: Dwight L. Roth

Old Musicians

Old musicians die

But their music lives on

Beautiful tributes

To the power they harnessed

That changed the world

Challenged politics

Social Norms

And, brought about revolutions

Music that touches the soul

Reaches all the way to Heaven

And Hell

Yes, old musicians die

But their music is alive and well

Today at d’Verse, it is open link night. Linda, our host talked about her love for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when she was young. Some musicians that we enjoyed have passed on for various reasons. John Lennon’s music Imagine will last into the next generation and beyond. I loved country music, which lost a number of its iconic singers early in life. I think of Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, who died in their prime. Buddy Holly also left us way too soon. Even so, their music lives on. This poem is a tribute to them.

I painted my old Harmony guitar a few years ago. I found it many years ago at a yard sale, coming apart at the seams. I glued it back together and it works fine. It was one you could have ordered from the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue back in the 1950s. I laid the guitar on the canvas and traced it off full size and then painted it.

Join us at: https://dversepoets.com

Photo: Ruth Roth

Soaring

Wings spread wide apart

Soaring high on summer wind

Viewing the menu

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Painting: Dwight L. Roth

 

On and Off

Painting by: Piet Mondrian, ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’, 1942-43, moma.org

Kim at d’Verse, introduced us to the painting above, and asked that we use it as inspiration for our *Haibun Monday. As I looked at the implication of streets and intersections, I thought that would be too obvious to write about. My wife thought it looked like a circuit board, which really connected with me.

Circuit boards have gone from large boards of soldered tubes, transistors, capacitors, and switches to boards so small you can’t even see the pathways. My hearing aids have four channels and three volume settings, and are hidden neatly behind each ear. Pushing one button controls both at the same time. Now we have wrist watches that can check body functions and even do electrocardiograms. Who knows what they will come up with next.

Hidden solder paths
Connect on and off switches
Summer tree roots ‘twined

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*Haibuns are a form of Japanese Poetry with two or three short crisp paragraphs of prose followed by a traditional Haiku, that references a season.

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Unfinished

 

This painting caused me great frustration in getting the turtle to look right in the sand. As a result it remained unfinished. Finally, I simply redid the painting, keeping the moon and changing the scene from the beach to the mountains. I like the way it turned out.  A friend that I work with decided he wanted it, so now it has a good home.

Some things in life don’t

turn out the way you had planned

Time to change the scene

Rethink what is important

Recreate something you love

 

Paintings: Dwight l. Roth

*The turtle lies at the point where the stream turns!

 

 

 

Imagine

The thrill of the imagination
Takes us places we can never go
Beyond this earthly home
Out into the solar system
Wrapping our minds around the
Concept of a galaxy in a world far far away
Imagine going into the depths of the earth
“All the way to China,” as we used to say
…Our way of saying very deep

Imagine riding with Voyager
As it continues to sail out into the universe
Beyond our solar system to worlds unknown
Having paid its dues in 2012 sailing on
Singing, “I’ll fly away oh glory, I’ll fly away!”

Who are the imagineers of the present
With visions beyond this realm
Pushing the outer limits in ways yet to be
Not content to live in Earth’s isolation
Rather seeking ways to imagine
The reality of a Star Trek generation
That will stretch our imaginations even more

Painting “Earth Rise” – Dwight L. Roth

Posting for Open Link night on d’Verse.  Join us  at: https://dversepoets.com

Truth Telling

 Art is often unappreciated till the artist is long dead.

By then a new generation who reads and hears

or looks and sees values the beauty others missed.

 

Artists paint and poets write their understanding of truth

in hopes that it will resonate with another soul.

Words bring light in a dark night of disillusionment.

 

Truth is often ignored, denied, or rejected

So we wrap it in enticing words that draw you in

then lay it out with arrows that gently pierce your soul;

Hoping that a few will stick long enough to make a difference.

~Dwight L. Roth`

 Painting : Dwight L. Roth

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This sums up why we write and create art…

“Posterity may even, will likely even, forget us entirely. And yet, we are writing. And we are, for the purposes of this discussion at least, thinking about writing something of immediate force that might remain relevant to the future.” ~ Czeslaw Milosz

Quote taken from: the Poetry Foundation

ESSAY

Tell It Slant

How to write a wise poem.

BY CAMILLE T. DUNGY

Keeping Busy in Isolation

Since the weather has warmed up I have been out in my garage painting again. The 42 x 42 inch painting above was given to my neighbor. They asked me to paint a large sunflower for their daughter. That is the last painting which I worked on today. I still a have some work to do on the seed part of the sunflower.  The middle photos are a painting I did on my old Washburn Guitar. It has had significant damage with a hole patched in the body and a head that got snapped and glued back together. Amazingly, it still holds tuning and plays very well. I am a fan of old steam trains as you can see.

Painting // passing time

Waiting for Summer release

Ready for a hug

Paintings: Dwight L. Roth

I finished the Sunflower today…