Seven Sundays

SEVEN SUNDAYS

In the late 1970s Michael McClure and I produced a seven part series of his poems illustrated with my photographs for several years in California Living Magazine in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. The following un-retouched photographs are some examples of the whole collection of images and poetry, which we have titled Seven Sundays. The project is currently available for publication as a book.

BORROWED FEET

LOVE ME FOR THE FOOL
I AM
(the laughing angel-imbecile).
The thrill
of kissing you
is seeing me
reflected in your eyes.
We try for purity
but
still
we're glorious
blobs
of meat.
I worship you
like blood
or oil or wheat.
Our love is flawed
and swallowed
by the rush of time.
A mindless innocence,
they say,
is crime.
We dance on borrowed feet.

THE CORNER OF POST AND POWELL

I WOULD KNOW WHAT ALL THESE
MYSTERIES ARE
AND RAISE MY MIND
to another kind
of being
that
is
fit
to chase
the fleetist
act of seeing.
All
these
Spirit
Things
are
loops
to rub against
as a foxy cat goes purring.
Angel. Skyscraper. Blue Carnation.

CHANGER

AT THE HOUR OF HIS BIRTH HE WAS
A WOLF-SHAPED CLOUD.
On his tenth breath he was a sea cave.
With the squirt of milk in his throat
he changed into a moon of Uranus.
When he first walked he was a butterfly landing
on a sailing ship.
Then
he was a pirate
and a sweating slave
at the oars. Soon
he was a sleek killer
whale.
Next
he became a buddha-like boulder
covered over
with mosses and nettles.
Next he was a shelf of fungus
on a cool tree trunk.
Then he became a giant elk
and a son of the wine god.
Next he became
lake full of fish.
At last
he changed
into Proteus!

SONG

I WORK WITH THE SHAPE
of spirit
moving the matter
in my hands;
I
mold
it from
the inner matrix.
Even a crow or fox
understands.