child/father

vintage family tree, circa 1880

Dear Dads of the World, Past & Present,

Here is a trio of beautiful sentiments for you, today.  May you walk in natural piety always.

Buffalo Springfield   I Am a Child

Brian Wilson   Child is Father of the Man

Wm. Wordsworth   My Heart Leaps Up

a letter about things

 

Untitled, Dan Flavin, 1973.

Dear You,

Hey!  It's me again!  I have bee thinking and unearthing all kinds of detritus and ideas.  Ideae?  Idee? I would like an apostrophe s-less plural here, and I am going to have to make it on my own, I guess.  Anyway, I found an old poem, a pome, a pomme, which I give to you here, but, in characteristic Dodo style, I also want to associate by proximity and whimsy, these other items:  

A song, and

A bit of writing on Dan Flavin's pieces.  

Ooh, now maybe the order is all wrong?  I should have given you the poem first, then the Flavin thing, then the song?  Or, no, you have the image of the Flavin first, or no, the first thing you get is words, in the title, and then the image.  Well, wrong or right, these are the details I consider when I am addressing you.

(found in desk drawer in October 2022; written in, 2009?)

A poem about time’s inner workings.

 

If you come in here,

I’ll show you a little bit of how

time works.

You turn the world down to one mile-

this would be the old days-

then, more miles, 

less miles,

four miles,

two miles,

today.

Then it’s zero miles, because 

we don’t know what’s going to come 

after that,

I think.

 

His Shirt Said

Dear Whomever,

I have been thinking of you; a lot.  I haven't wanted to write, because I could only think of complaints.  I know you don't want to hear all that.  And you know I am committed to giving you the best of what I have here.

I enclose this poem- I hope you will read it, and know what I mean.





His Shirt Said


I was going to tell you about how it is here,
where I live,
about the beauty of it all;
the branches, the breeze,
even the chrome and the people; but
a man was walking across the road
and his shirt said
his chest read:
Because I Said So.