Dan Welden – Laurel

Dan Welden’s sculpture Laurel was created in 2022 of Laurelwood branches.

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-16

Biography:

Dan Welden, as the original pioneer of alternative printmaking since 1970, has been at the forefront of ‘health and safety’ in the arts. As co-author of Print – making in the Sun and director of Hampton Editions, Ltd., his 50-plus years of collaboration include many talented artists.

With 91 solo exhibitions to date, including the paramount exhibitor at the Cape Cod Museum of Art and travels to 53 countries, he was awarded a ‘lifetime achievement award’ from A/E Foundation in New York; a title of Professor Emeritus from Escuela de Bellas Artes in Cusco, Peru and most recently a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant.

Dan Welden’s Website

Chris Castro – Starwind

Chris Castro – Starwind

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024

Scott Bluedorn – Solar Scallop Dial

Scott Bluedorn – Solar Scallop Dial

*photo by Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024

Aurelio Torres – Chittadina III

Aurelio Torres – Chittadina III

Photo by Deidre Dolan  

Instagram: @deirdrejdolan

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – 04

Aurelio Torres sculpture  was created in 2022 of reclaimed wood.

Aurelio’s work infuses the aesthetic principles of classicism within contemporary settings. His painting typically depicts scenes from nature or portraits, and his sculptures most often interpret the simple, clean lines of wooden ships. 

From a young age, Aurelio has traveled extensively around the world. This has inspired his determination to create much of his work in natural, outdoor settings. His aesthetic sensibility, as evidenced in his work, is one of essential simplicity and natural, uncontrived beauty. 

Biography:

Aurelio Torres was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to a family of artists. Aurelio’s work infuses the aesthetic principles of classicism within contemporary settings. His painting  typically depicts scenes from nature, world events or portraiture, and his sculptures most often interpret the simple, clean lines of maritime vessels.

Aurellio’s work can be purchased here 1st Dibs- Aurelio Torres

www.aureliotorres.com

Instagram @aurelio_torres

Peter Menderson – Chimera

Peter Menderson – Chimera

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-12

Peter Menderson’s work is about connecting in the most basic physical sense but also metaphorically. His mother was Scottish from industrial Glasgow, and childhood visits to the shipyards of Clydebank with their towering cranes and great piles of anchor chains left a vivid early impression. He began making links and chain forms for a project room at P.S.1 and has continued composing with links, and rings, combined with other sculptural elements to form arrangements of weight, mass, and material that aim for a visceral and haptic connection to the the viewer.
Uncovering the ancient chain and ring forms hiding in plain sight for use in his sculpture, Peter found a direct and elegant path to combine diverse materials and to investigate the weight and the beauty of the random, as the links lie against one another like jacks thrown by a child. It is in the “piling up” of the forms that the truly sculptural occurs. That the links and rings can be rearranged is essential to the ethereal presence of the work.
Peter has an MFA in sculpture from Yale, and lives and works in NewYork City and Bellport, NY.

Biography:

Peter Menderson is a sculptor who lives and works in NYC and Bellport. he graduated from Yale Art School and has shown his work at PS1 and most recently at CEED and at  Marquee Projects. experimenting with diverse materials and finding new ways to combine them drives his work.

Peter Menderson’s Website

Peter Menderson’s Instagram- @pmenderson

John DiNaro – Stewball

John DiNaro – Stewball

Photo by Deidre Dolan

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – 01

John DiNaro’s Artist statement:

“I was always a daydreamer and doodler, all through my elementary and high school years.

When I became a biological oceanographer at the University of California at Humboldt, I was following the plans of others and what they saw in me. In my heart, my dreams showed the path to my soul, which was the world of the dreamer.

For years my everyday was split between being a commercial fisherman and a sculptor. As time went on, more time was spent in my studio, creating. I fell in love with the world of art and creativity. With passion and commitment, finally, my own life started to unfold.

Following my dreams, I began to sell my sculptures, murals, and educational courses. Over the past 30 years I have worked with Arts-in-Education in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and even in upstate NY, teaching a variety of programs in creativity.”

Biography:

John DiNaro has been balancing simultaneous careers in education, sculpture/fine art and commercial fishing for over 50 years. He loves to share his thoughts on creativity and strives to boost others’ confidence to create in any medium. The natural 71 world provides inspiration and enjoyment in each career field.

John DiNaro’s Website

John Cino – Gates of Babe

John Cino – Gates of Babe

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-16

Biography:

John Cino is a sculptor, art educator, and curator. He graduated from Hunter College of the City University of New York in 1985 with a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts and from Stonybrook University in 1982 with a BA in Fine Arts. After holding positions as a gallery assistant for noted NY artist Ed Buonagurio an art teacher for the NYC public schools John began teaching on the collegiate level in 1999.

Highlights as a sculptor include the installation of Neried on the Mississippi River waterfront in Dubuque, Iowa, artist in residency programs at Stony Brook University and East End Arts Council, and two consecutive NYSCA Long Island Creative Artists Grants in 2013 and 2104. From those grants John first extended his work into public art with Library at Babel: Patchogue and then into multimedia performance with Common Ground. His work has been exhibited in sculpture parks, museums, college campuses, and lobbies including the Islip-MacArthur Airport. A cross-sectional career retrospective, Considering the Goddess was exhibited in 2022 at the Br. Kenneth Chapman Gallery, Iona University.

Cino has taught on the graduate and undergraduate levels courses in a broad range of studio practices as well as many phases of art history. Currently, he teaches sculpture and three-dimensional design at Nassau Community College and Farmingdale State College. While studying mathematics at Suffolk Community College he received a grant to create and implement an innovative course in mathematics that taught concepts in math through art making.

In the mid 90’s Cino was president of 14 Sculptors Gallery, a highly regarded sculptors’ cooperative begun in 1969. During his tenure, he organized exhibitions, and saw the relocation of the gallery and its eventual reinvention as a non-localized artists collective.
He has curated many exhibitions in New York City and Long Island including 14 Sculptors Gallery, Adelphi University, the Islip Museum, and Nassau Community College. He is the senior curator of the Patchogue Arts Council Gallery, now the Museum of Contemporary Art, Long Island, and has been since its inception in 2008. He developed and co-curated two of its largest exhibitions the Patchogue Biennials of 2009 and 2011 bringing 40 artists from Brooklyn to the East together in 12,000 sq ft. Cino speaks regularly on art and art history for PAC/MoCALI lecturing on historical topics in Learning to Look and interviewing artists in Coffee with a Curator, each offered monthly through the Patchogue Arts Council.

Cino is most noted for his fluid wood carvings which he began in 2005. After 18 years of carving a recent career retrospective in 2022 reminded him of older interests. Since late 2022 he has begun working on three new series using techniques developed in the mid-1980s.

John Cino’s Website

Instagram @cino_john

Tonito Valderamma – The Rising Eagle

Mark Van Wagner – Probe Boletus

Mark Van Wagner – Probe Boletus

*Photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-20

Biography:

Mark Van Wagner received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied Art History  and Urban Planning at Colorado College. His work is included in many private and public collections throughout the United States
and Europe. His deconstructive abstract paintings and sculptures are made of natural and pigmented sands that poignantly remind us of life’s cycles.

Mark Van Wagner’s Website

Instagram @mark.van

Mauritis Bosma – Untitled

Mauritis Bosma – Untitled

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-21

Biography:

Maurits Bosma was born on Staten Island on May 28, 1959. He was trained in Holland as a naval engineer and worked on ocean tug  boats and salvage vessels. Since 1999 he has been living in the Hamptons on Long Island. The need to create artistic work became important for him.

James Greco – Happiness is a Choice

James Greco – Happiness is a Choice

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-22

Jay Sylvester This Mortal Coil

Jay Sylvester This Mortal Coil

Photo by Deidre Dolan

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 02

Biography:

Jay Sylvester lives and works in his studio in Bellport, NY where he sources materials and inspiration from the fields, forests and  beaches of Long Island. His work references the existential complexity of man’s relationship with nature: the tension between  oneness and separateness, and the beauty of decay and renewal.

Jay Sylvester’s Website

Instagram @jaysylvesterart

Rocio Snyder – Viking Ritual in memory of Lutz Rath

Rocio Snyder – Viking Ritual in memory of Lutz Rath

Photo by Deidre Dolan

CEED Art on the Trail 2024- 02

Ted Thirlby – Tikkun

Ted Thirlby – Tikkun

*Photo Credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-3

Mixed Media

Biography:

Ted Thirlby has shown his work in multiple solo and group shows in New York City and Eastern Long Island since 1978. He works in various mediums, including sculpture on the wall and floor, painting and drawing. He is represented by Carter Burden Gallery in  NYC.

Ted Thirlby’s website tedthirlbystudio.com

Instagram @tedthirlbystudio

Roy Braeger – Can You Hear Me

Roy Braeger – Can You Hear Me

*Photo Credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024-4

Justin Greenwald – Komorebi _ Eclipse

Justin Greenwald – Komorebi _ Eclipse

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024

Biography:

Justin Greenwald has been drawing and painting since the age of eight and while he considers himself a colorist, he is just as happy  to work in black-and-white. Self portraiture, abstracted landscapes and sea scapes, and repetitive mark making comprise most of  his work these days.

Robin Gianis – Madrigal

Robin Gianis – Madrigal

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024

 Biography:

Robin explores the patterns of nature in ceramic art. She did her undergraduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of  Michigan in Florence, Italy, and later received her teaching degree from Long Island University where she first began to explore clay. A native of Massachusetts, Robin has been an East Hampton resident for over thirty years, and a multidisciplinary  Visual Art teacher, kindergarten through twelfth grade, at the Bridgehampton School for twenty-plus years.

Robin Gianis’ Website

Instagram @robingianisInstagram @robingianis

Gregory Corn – Pathfinder

Gregory Corn – Pathfinder

*photo credit-  Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024

Biography:

Gregory Corn is an American Artist whose work has been said to “expand the boundaries” of art. Corn has been making art for over half a century. In 1981 Corn founded Rockledge Industries ltd. Blending his artistry with architectural details, Corn began taking on  the most creative projects he could find while always infusing his work with deep practical knowledge.

Gregory Corn’s Website: www.gregorycorn.com

Gregory Corn’s Instagram @gregorycornartist

Katia Ramsey Read – Habitat IV

Katia Ramsey Read – Habitat IV 

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024

Elyzabeth Meade – Golden Bough(t)

Elyzabeth Meade – Golden Bough(t)

*photo credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024

Biography:

Multi-media artist Elyzabeth Meade has received numerous prizes, commissions, residencies from institutions, performing  ensembles, and dance / theater companies. In her on-going Storefront Window Project, Meade creates performances, costumes and sets that are in dialogue with a current art exhibit or store theme. She studied at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence, University, Dartington  College, England, and received her Ph.D. at The University of Oregon.

Instagram @elyzabethemeade

Lori Horowitz – Beauty from Decay

Lori Horowitz – Beauty from Decay

Photo Credit- Anthony Graziano

CEED Art on the Trail 2024 – August 22 2024

Pam J. Brown

photo credit Anthony Graziano

Pam J. Brown’s Flower Power sculpture created in 2023 consists of 6 tall sheet metal flowers that mesmerize in any setting.

Pam Brown is known for making sculpture that portrays her personal story as a naturalist, inspired by the beauties and tragedies of wildlife and American history.  Her artwork focuses on anthropological and environmental concerns of extinction and the human condition in reference to the natural world. Brown’s aesthetics of industrial imagery are integral to her artmaking processes, as are collecting and salvaging materials from abandoned rural and urban factory sites.  Using these discarded remnants, such as wire, sheet metal, copper, wood, fabric, and rubber, she builds architectural structures and sculptures that look like artifacts. Much of this work appears worn and weathered from use or exposure and has the familiar appearance of everyday forms with the strangeness of personified objects.  Brown carefully fabricates sculptures that are composed of thin skeletal elements to enclose space in an open structure, thus creating a physical and psychological sense of inner and outer that permeate our deeper selves.

Pam J. Brown’s Website 

Reflections in Color and Light – Haim Mizrahi  

I. Light and Color

Trip up the moon of light,
Colors reflecting over shadows that never existed.
A brief journey across the light at shifting speeds,
The ground of pure color reflects with ease.
Leftover mixes of wonder,
Lame fixures of lust for anchoring in vibrant hues.

II. Structure and Density

You asked me once, at the tip of movement,
Where is the before to turn?
The swirl to blast the hidden wish to pieces,
Yet not shattered into the salvaged steadiness,
Known for its promise to deliver,
A splash of love, rendering pleasure so close to the needy,
Wherever it is.

III. Unity

Souls mate,
In the dance of color and light,
In the embrace of structure and density.
Reflecting, refracting,
Together, they create the art of existence.

IV. Rooting Light and Color

Now it’s time to root the long-driven ray of light,
Single-handedly craving a see-through penetration.
It changes direction and velocity,
As color highlights recollections of years past, reshuffling logic.
What do we seek through the haste of a breaking dawn?
I’ve already rubbed my shoulders against
The crowdedness of sweet morning encounters.
Allowing color to shower the light,
Unity will spell the timing to ease into greatness.

V. Conclusion

And in this symphony of light and hue,
We find ourselves anew,
Bound by the beauty of our journey’s view,
A testament to what light and color can do.

Haim Mizrahi

Biography:

Haim Mizrahi is an internationally exhibited painter and poet who has hosted an arts interview show, “Hello-Hello,” at LTV in  Wainscott, Long Island, since 2000, and has shown his work and curated literary events at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, NY. His  collaborative poetry book, Slipcover, came out in 2021.

Shell Shadow Blue – Russ Green

Night cascades to shadows
of days and I think of how many hearts
are closed, locked up tight as that scallop shell
on the ocean floor, in a sea of trauma
and how it imprisons our compassion.

I mean, we’re just trying to survive
just like the sea scallops.
They have ocean acidification and pollution
that are killing em off. They go to where they think
it’s safe, but the acidification and pollution finds them
again and again like a murderous marine colonialist.
But, the scallops are revolutionaries. They storm
the sandy sea beds and bays, filtering out the toxins
en masse, waving their big sea scallop flag
for the whole population of their watery world to see.

And, they do it with the simplest of means. They filter
out everything from the water but the plankton.
They’re the world’s best practitioners of Occom’s razor,
sifting out all the aquatic extraneousness
to get to what it needs to live.
And, as the shadow
of time moves over the water.
The scallop is what the marine researchers
call, “free living” because unlike the other mollusks,
it can propel itself long distances across
the ocean floor by opening
and closing its shell, thrusting
water through, while all the other shellfish gaze in envy.
Like free wheelin Dylan comin out of his Minnesota shell.
And the scallop glances back and back and back
at its underworld of fans with its two hundred deep blue eyes.
It is indeed the ’Ol Blue Eyes of the sea!
But, it doesn’t get stuck on gender
either. No, it has both sex organs!
They’re our salty hermaphrodite friend!

And here, in this place, only a short walk
from its big blue home, it’s shell captures time
from the ocean’s sibling sky, turns light
from its mother sun into shadow,
but only just enough to show us
where we are… as it points
to the here. The now.

Russ Green 

Biography:

Russ Green, a graduate of Hofstra University, has served as co-editor at Great Weather for Media, and has run reading series and poetry and arts events around Long Island and NYC. In addition to hosting and curating poetry stages at various festivals, Russ has read his work in cities across America.

We Sit and Stay with you, Bamboo – Kate Lamberg

your resilience keeps you growing…
overtaking meadow, and garden
bending with the wind,
resurrecting at dawn—
nourishing wild ones!
transformed into flutes,
for peaceful ceremony
soothing all who take the time
to sit and worship nature–
a symbiotic celebration
we sit and stay with you, dear bamboo-
as we trust you shall stay with us too,
a few more centuries…
disallowing steel, brick, and mortar
to interfere with your natural design
in late summer, a modern dancer-
swishing and swaying
in autumn, turning silver brown
in winter, dry and lifeless
only to re- emerge in the spring,
stronger how, in your rawest green essence-
you are seen, and simply do shine

Kate Lamberg

Recovering Our Oceans from Mass Shipping 
(inspired by Aurelio-Torres’s sculptures) – Pramila Venkateswaran

The artist tastes the oceans as he carves wood mirroring
his intention: elongated concave cups ready to receive
skies, floating lazily, oriented by winds, guided by stars,

not become slave ships speeding up GDPs of nations,
spewing waste into pristine waterways,
Cycloning fragile webs of life.

Imagine how the original boat came to be:
the artist like a child playing “stack anything until they fall,”
laying one bowl atop another, the larger atop the smaller,

like a tuna bearing the weight of a schooner,
salt and fish-scented wood ready to see the sails billow
answering the wind’s call.

Now we witness this transformed facsimile grill oceans
tilting the earth further on its axis, our plunder’s weight,
its gasp of imbalance.

We don’t need immediate fulfillment of wants, for we
suffer surfeit that feeds our trash heaps to rivers.
It’s enough that our local genie fills our plates and turns on our lights.

How to rescue oceans and sea life from scores of crisscrossing aquatic eyes? Come, let’s return these sunny beauties
to the artist’s imagination that gave them birth.

Pramila Venkateswaran

Biography:
Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15) and co-director of Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival, is the author of many poetry volumes, the most recent being We Are Not a Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2022), winner of the New York Book Festival award.

Website: http://www.pramilav.com/

Breaking the Chains 
~After Studying Peter L. Menerson’s Chimera, 2020~ – Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan

If we keep on speaking our
truth, they won’t see our sex
our size, our skin &
finally shut their eyes.
They will only hear our words
& dig for more truth
we’re all buried beneath
by ripping off layers of lies.
We all will be released from
the chains of crippling bias
forged on link at a time
freedom for all: the prize.

Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, PhD

Biography:
Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, Ph.D., founder and president of the Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository, was the first woman Suffolk  County Poet Laureate (2009 – 2011), the 2017 Walt Whitman Birthplace Long Island Poet of the Year, and Poet of the Month (October) for The Seventh Quarry Press, Swansea, Wales.

PEGASUS – Tom Stock

The bell rings, the gates open…twelve horses lunge forward THEIR OFF!

Pegasus, a white mare runs and wins…giddy yap giddy yap giddy yap giddy giddy
giddy yap yap… all marvel at this magical horse with its silvery wings… his trainer
leads the horse to the winners circle. John DiNaro has used Pegasus as a model for
his sculpture. John picks up four sparklers… Pegasus invites John to mount him and
make a journey… Pegasus heads straight up through a hole in Earth’s atmosphere,
past the solar system, through the Milky Way into deep, dark, silent space… giddy
yap giddy yap giddy yap, giddy giddy yap yap yap… John spots a large empty
place among the stars and throws four sparklers into the four corners and calls this
space the Pegasus Constellation…

Back in the winners circle, Pegasus shows his silver wings to children. John’s
sculpture has evolved into a legend… Pegasus takes a victory ride… giddy yap
giddy yap giddy yap giddy yap yap yap giddy giddy giddy yap…

Tom Stock

Biography:
Tom Stock’s recently published third book of poems
is Buffet. Stock is a poet of place with his first two
books on the Pine Barrens and Fire Island National Sea
Shore. He is poet-in-residence for an organic farm and
the Hempstead Plains.

Entering the Gates of Babel – Maggie Bloomfield

The metal gates shape an entrance,
upright, symmetrical,
a welded metaphor of steel,
promising words,
consonants, vowels, texts
to pore over.
You enter, innocent, believing
in the order of libraries-
computers, Dewey Decimals.

In Biblical dreams, entering,
you are greeted with a labyrinth.
Stacks of books rise, erratic cliff sides
invite you to a dangerous climb.
Where is the ladder that can
take you to the pinnacle
after you pass through these steel gates?
Where the translator,
librarian of the spirit
who will help you decipher
random languages of the universe?
Climb at your own risk,
among millions of volumes
scattered randomly shelf by shelf,
according to God’s will.

When wakefulness summons,
you will walk through these curves
and configurations
of sculpted light
and space.
Enter and search endlessly
for the single book
that will reveal
your life.

Maggie Bloomfied

Wild Wings – Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)

wild wings
like flames of fire,
feathers you can’t tame

wild eagle
swift, victorious,
eyeing
the scene

sculpted from wood,
a tree
an actual eagle
may have nested in,
rested in, and
looked out
into the blue skies, green waters,
all the colors of the changing seasons
seen

wild wings
they always come in pairs
otherwise
the eagles wouldn’t be wild

wild wings
they always come in pairs
yet the Spirit that moves them
will always
be one and the same

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)

Biography:
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) encourages people to learn from direct experiences, not just head knowledge. He is a small press  publisher and author of 17 books, traveling a holistic mystic Kaballah-rooted pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island and the cycles of the Seasons.

When I am still and of a place…

(Ekphrastic poem from Mark Van Wagner’s Probe) – David Taylor

When I am still and of a place
…
and a turn of wind sways the pitch pines and scarlet oaks,
and the seaside goldenrod bright yellows fold dune and beach into one,
and an osprey call hurdles across the bay,
and a possum shuffles deeper into the woods with five joeys on her back,
and a blue dasher hunting, hits the water like stone,
…
then, I can let the world pierce me,

I, open and blood-red raw,
I, gut and gutted,
I, nameless and wrecked,
I, run through by comet and calm,
I, wounded, vulnerable, attentive,
I am no longer only I, but less and more,
and perhaps, for a time,

am alive,
to attend to this shock of wildness here,
to breathe in with all that breathes,
to passwith all that passes,
and rest with peace
in wind, flower, animal and stone

…
when I am still and of a place.

David Taylor

Biography: 

David Taylor is an Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Environmental Humanities track in the Sustainability Studies Program in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University. His writing crosses disciplinary boundaries and genres—poetry, creative nonfiction, scholarship, and science writing; however, at the core of his work always is a concern for environmental sustainability and community. 

https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/somas/people/_profiles/david-taylor.php

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=804500042&mibextid=LQQJ4d

The Welding – Gladys Henderson

Their feet are steel
welded together
they form a ring of potency
a testament to unity through struggle,
like a chorus
their careful assembly points heavenward,
the timbre of their rods ring
each time the creator moves
a spike to set it in its place,
it won’t be long now until the strength
of woven metal
must hold up to the atomic fires,
hideous bombs once given cute names
but for now
they are locked into their
chosen destinies,
what happens to one—may happen to all,

Gladys Henderson

Biography:
Gladys Henderson was honored as the Walt Whitman Birthplace Poet of the Year in 2010 and served as Poet Laureate for Suffolk  County 2017-2019. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Eclipse of Heaven, in 2009. You can read her poetry on YouTube  by searching for her channel gladpoet@gladpoet

https://www.youtube.com/@gladpoet

Perspective – M. Francis Garcia

When the wheels run ragged and
you are stuck alone in the ditch
during the black night
don’t forget metal chains
that bind you might also lift
your dry lips to smile, don’t forget
the comic element of it all:
remember when you fall
onto cement with an
already bum knee
as you get out of the
parked cart to search
for help, for relief
there are not only
lavender bruises
with tentacles like
a purple Portuguese man o’ war
kissing skin, scaffolding
sore bones beneath;
there are sometimes also
exotic birds with silly plumes
of muddied peach feathers that land
on your tired head to bring
fresh perspective. In fact, what
was it that one recently said?
“The road is rough, the road is rough,”
as if to understand, then, “I’ve had enough,
I’ve had enough,” an affirmation.
This wacky avian empathy perches upon us
and provides distraction, even from death,
life’s mysterious pothole. When we, alone
in the darkness, say to ourselves,
near the last breath, “it’s too soon to go”
we hear eternal cockatiel echo,
“don’t be afraid, you’ll never fade,
you’ve done good,
you’ve done good,
you’ve done good.”

Mary R. Garcia

Biography:
M. Frances Garcia, M.A., LMSW, is a social worker, contemplative poet, and photographer. She teaches English at Suffolk County Community College.

Instagram @PoetMaryFran

Sojourn – Mindy Kronenberg

I was dreamt into existence,
swaddled in the arms of trees,
cradled against wind
with the feathered songs of birds.

Unfurled in the tendrils
of tender branches,
I was freed to walk the earth, roots
sly and serpentine, teasing
ecstatic childhood steps

that in time unleashed foot-falls
of adolescent desire, a graffiti
of heartache and hope, words
like spires of light and heat,
winding strange songs on my burning heart.

Age brings its canopy of regret and wonder,
a pergola softening under silvery vines.
This is life, a dream
of faces, voices, sand and stars
graced, over the years

knitted from memories,
love obliterating fear.
Let this be my vessel when I depart⎯
a basket of journeys and tales,
veined map of all I have learned,

and be my final embrace.

Mindy Kronenberg

Biography:
Mindy Kronenberg is an award-winning poet, writer, critic, and professor, SUNY Empire State University, with work appearing internationally in hundreds of print and online publications. Her poetry has been featured in live performance/broadcast programming and in art installations. She edits Oberon poetry magazine and reviews books for Mom Egg.

www.facebook.com/mindy.kronenberg.1

Viking Dragon – Adam Fisher

Go back to the 10th Century
and imagine an open Viking ship,
its dragon figurehead leading
them to conquest.
Thirty sailors, under a single square sail
are headed across the North Sea
to Western Europe for
plunder, conquest and, rape.
No matter where they went
the dragon protected them,
made them successful,
or so they believed.

Adam Fisher

Biography:
Adam D. Fisher, rabbi emeritus of Temple Isaiah, Stony Brook, NY is the author of numerous articles and two books of liturgy. He is also the author of a book of short fiction, and four books of poetry. He was the Poetry Editor of the CCAR Journal from 2006-2014.

Sustainable Love Song – Kelly Powell

Are you listening after all these years? After all these tears and fears
fairytale love seems just some tired game,
but unbending oak trees break in a hurricane
bamboo swaying with the wind and rain
comes back again.

No earthquake, volcano, no famine,
no ice age can keep us from jamming
right now in the car on our way
to the grocery store, 20 years ago or today.

Every heartache equals every joy,
for every girl who finds their boy
or girl their girl or boy their boy
so like a child playing with a favorite toy.

Until time stands still for us.
Their will be no stopping for ice
when the glaciers are melting with such ease
like your very messy grilled cheese
and oceans
rising like emotions
in the heat of dog days of summer
pipes leaking, you calling the plumber.

There will be no Ponzi scheme.
There will be no titanic theme.

No one heeded the warnings in Pompeii
yet somehow their story survives today.

So many times love goes wrong
but we stay strong,
still dancing in the kitchen, no one watching
with your crazy omelette scorching.

Babies are crying, world’s are ending
while all the love we are sending
out to the world with climates changing
and furniture needing rearranging
and the earch correcting herself, so they say
but we still have today,
even if we are not promised tomorrow,
evenin if the world or our love ends in sorrow.

So let’s not sit the one out,
let us scream and shout.
Let’s dance the night away
bring forever into our one small day
or at least into the morning
with birdsong sending out a deeper warning,
if only we could just get past your snoring
or the parts of life that are truly boring.

Though the road may be rough and the earth
round
and warriors for peace and love abound,
let us fill all our containers
with the only thing on earth that matters.

Though this sentiment may be old and trite,
this will be what helps us sleep tonight,
get us through grueling heat and melting caps
with soft, purring, sleeping cats in our laps.

The world will soon be ending, my darling,
but even then you will still be charming

Kelly Powell

Biography:

Kelly J. Powell is a poet native to Long Island and a 1988 graduate of SUNY Binghamton’s Creative Writing Program. She has  performed widely on Long Island and NYC. She has a new book of poems called Posthumously Yours from Local Gems Press available on Amazon.

Intrinsic Fortitude – Adam Greenwald

Don’t bury your talent, invest so it grows,
what you reap must first be sown.
Sun shining down via our creator,
It’s wonderful intertwining art with nature.

A clear conscience makes for a soft pillow,
my brother dreams, envisioning a multitude
of numbers amongst lofty color schemes.

Hungry hunters happily hike up to the cabin
through the snow, oh what a gentlemanly crew,
reminiscing about their ventures over
mouthwatering venison stew.

Bumblebees, butterflies, bears,
deer, owls, rabbits… One realizes who they
truly are when freed from soiled habits.
Emerging earth tones enhance artistic balance,
the heart bleeds, the mind sees, the soul screams,
as the magic happens.

Adam Greenwald

Seeing Blue – Nancy Keating

Even in the woods, we can
look up and see it: the sky,
our blue ocean. We’re surrounded
by blue and nestled in shades of it.
Look, only in our lifetime
did we truly wrap our minds
around earth, the big blue ball
as seen from space, at once small
and significant. Self-portrait
in a gravity-free mirror. So much depends
on viewpoint. See how much of us
depends on the sun or its muting.
In every era the image of the sun looks
like a flower which looks
like the chicory along the road
like that freeze-frame splash
a stone makes in a lake.

Nancy Keating

Biography:
Nancy Keating’s poetry has been seen in The South-Hampton Review, New Letters, Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and  elsewhere. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she has two books and a chapbook to her credit. She has an MFA from Stony Brook University and teaches at Farmingdale State College.

NATURALLY – Chip Williford

HALF AWAKENED
LODGED IN PHANTASMAGORIA
WHERE TIME DOES NOT EXIST
HUGE AMOUNTS OF WEIGHTLESS
LAYERS OF OPTIMISM
DROWNS A EVENT HORIZON
PRESENTS AS FALLING
IN THE MIST
TESTING GRAVITY
A DOOR SHUTS
OPENING PORTALS
WHERE NOTHINGNESS
MATTERS

ATMOSPHERIC SHOWERS
ENGULFS IDEAS
SYNCOPATING ROGUE CASES
NARROWLY ESCAPES
FADING VOICES OF REASON
CACOPHONY OF YESTERDAY’S CHATTER

HARD SURFACES
EMBEDDED IN SPACE
REMINISCED OF DEFIANCE
REFLECTS SPIRITS OF LlGHT
REMNANTS Of YESTERDAYS WRATH

SO NATURALLY
HERE ERECTED A SCULPTURE
CREATED IN NATURE
BLOOMING PEACEFULLY
ALONG THIS SACRED PATH

Chip Williford

Biography:
Chip Williford is the Director/Co-host of Poetry Street, an online and in-person reading series, a writer and filmmaker, and an  advocate and activist for peace and human rights. His publications include Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Review,  Performance Poets Association Annual Literary Review, and The Sailors Review.

Open to Anything – Orel Protopopescu

Totemic ark,
concretely stark,
with rooms to let,
discrete couchettes
for sexed or sexless,
shy or feckless
lizard loungers,
winged balloonists,
full-time scroungers,
opportunists.

From silt and sand,
homes built by hand⎯
Venusian contours,
sensuous bunkers,
castles for deep
dream spelunkers.
Windows⎯ open.
Corners⎯ rounded.
Nothing⎯ token.
Art⎯ well-grounded.

Orel Protopopescu

Biography:
Orel Protopopescu was an Oberon prize winner (2010,
2020) and received a starred review in Library Journal
for her biography, Dancing Past the Light: The Life of
Tanaquil Le Clercq (University Press of Florida, 2021).
She’s the author of What Remains, A Thousand Peaks,
four picture books, and poems in journals and anthologies.

http://www.orelprotopopescu.com

The Golden Bough – Kathaleen Donnelly

In foggy night sky, sparks of light
in a branch high on a tall oak tree
turns it to gold as lightning strikes
through parted leaves.

Another minute passes, another bolt.
Something mystical. There’s an explanation,
I’m sure. Science could give reasons, but
I believe, a golden branch could be a talisman.

In pagan days, he who possessed the golden
bough was a god, ‘King of the Wood’, able
to heal and revive, protect from darkness and death.
Everything was sacred, animate, had souls.
Zeus and his wife Hera, oak-god and goddess,
were magical. The bough, a repository for their souls.

Priests were gods, bound to the life of the oak
and its mistletoe suspended on branches
between heaven and earth, giving them
power, title, duty to protect the grove.

We live in a world that evolved from superstition ⎯
magicians to religion to science. I am no longer
alone this night, rather, a part of something.
I thought I might float into the fog, embrace

the oak tree, sense its strength, feel safe within
its boughs, feel the love of God . . . find magic.

Kathaleen Donnelly

Biography:
Kathaleen Donnelly is a 1976 graduate of St. Vincent’s, formerly in Greenwich Village, who works at StonyBrook Medical Center as a Nurse Practitioner in Cardiology.With a little help from her friends, she created three anthologies, Paumanok: Poems and Pictures of Long Island, Interwoven and Transition. She strives to write poems you’d enjoy reading.

http://www.poetographyLongIsland.com

Woven Window – Kiki Hajkova

In a forest where the shadows creep,
Vibrant fungi thrive, a secret keep,
Decay gives birth to colors bright,
In the heart of nature’s quiet night.

Translucent silk, like morning mist,
Woven strands by nature kissed,
Photographs of life reformed,
Through rich layers, new shapes are born.

Vines that once would strangle, kill,
Now frame a window, standing still,
A stained glass forged from life’s debris,
Revealing truth through artistry.

We watch, voyeurs to the scene,
Where nature’s hand and human keen,
Blend in a mesh of silken threads,
Past struggles woven, future spreads.

Through glass of time, we peer and see,
The clash of greed and harmony,
Destruction masked as progress swift,
Yet precious things in shadows lift.

With resin, wood, and fibre string,
A testament to what’s gone wrong,
Yet in the chaos, beauty lies,
A woven window to the skies.

Kiki Hajkova

Dominion
for Pam Brown, “a naturalist inspired by the beauties
and tragedies of wildlife and American history” – Bruce Johnson

In its season a flower erupts from hot earth
and lifts its petals to the light.
Daisy sisters join in by the dozens,
a sudden ballet of color,
a riotous rite in the spring meadow.

Wildlife dances,
and the forces of nature build
to a music humankind
may choose to hear or ignore
with ears that heard, well enough,
the lines telling of man
being made in the image
of the maker,
and heard the words
that told of dominion,
and believed them, and still believe
in that charter with its rights and privileges.

It’s easy to plow a field of flowers under,
to fell a stand of trees, to take
what nature built and reform it into our image,
to carpet the land with concrete and asphalt
and weedless lawns.

Not so easy to remind a sovereign
of the duty that comes with power.
Can the Rose of Sharon’s beauty
give the factory farmer pause?
Consider the choices made
when loggers faced the redwood forests.

If we are the ladies and lords of creation,
are we to be end users or stewards?

Bruce Johnson

Deirdre J. Dolan, who is from Long Island, NY, had a curiosity for nature and wildlife from a young age. She was handed a camera and found a way to explore and tell stories, leading to a lifelong passion. She is a self-taught photographer and shoots in natural light.

Website: www.deirdrejdolan.com

Instagram: @deirdrejdolan

Anthony Graziano is a fine art photographer, author, educator and advocate for preservation who has captured the beauty of nature through his photography for over 30 years. He was selected by the Warhol Foundation as an artist in residence and his work has been exhibited at numerous Long Island galleries.

www.agrazianophoto.com

Instagram @agrazianophoto

Facebook @agrazphoto