ART OF THE ORDINARY

Art Of The Ordinary
Age 24, Durham County, North Carolina, 1969
(I arrived at this idea at age 24, but the poem is written from my perspective at a much older age.)
-- This is one poem, in an autobiographical series of poems, I posted here at WriteSpike. Go to my stories section for others. They are in chronological order. --

All three of these photographs are by me, Rick Doble.

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
~ Marcel Proust ~

Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows.
~ Claude Monet ~

What I see is ordinary

my wife two rooms away
swishing a string
above the cat
as he jumps in the air

while the outside light
from the glass door
outlines them in silhouette

on the side of the road
I see weeds in bloom
the redness of broomsedge in mist
and
rain on my windshield

when I drive over a bridge
soft twilight fades
from gold to blue,
white houses taking on
the colors of the light

I am tired of
the exotic, the elite
the hard to understand -
art should be immediate
simple and direct

a heightened moment
snatched from
the play of light
the play of movement
the play of work

nothing unusual
except to show
how extraordinary
it is to live from day to day