Grady Chambers's Blog

(from here)

On the Musashi plain
there is no peak
for the moon to enter
white clouds catch in

the tips of the flowers.

   - Minamoto Michikata (1189 - 1238)

“From deep in the earth, the roar of the river rises. The rhododendron leaves along the precipice are burnished silver, but night still fills the steep ravines where southbound migrants descend at day to feed and rest. The golden birds fall from the morning sun like blowing sparks that drop away and are extinguished in the dark.”

- October 11

One Afternoon (1935)

Untitled (Young Man Playing Ukulele) - 1934 - 1936

Sunday at the Laundromat (from Good River Review)

I’m good at putting quarters in the washing machine.

I make a stack atop the steel & slip the coins from one
hand to another.

I walk away the moment the machine begins to turn.

I drink a beer next door & think about my life.

I want to say the world turns like dirty clothes
around a center, but really the world turns whether
we learn to call anything dirty or not.

Most days, I am scared of loss.

I know I will miss loading someone else’s
underwear into a washer if I ever find myself alone.

The other day, a friend journeyed to his old apartment
to scavenge his last books. The other day, I watched
a dog greet its dog-park-friend by leaping like a demon—
a good one, so beautiful—upon its shoulders.

I love a perfect hug after a too-long time apart.
I love plants that raise their leaves just moments
after being watered. I love how,
if you turn anything towards light,
you might save its life.

There’s something perfect about the warmth of dry clothes.
I want to pile them in a pile, jump together into them.

I remember rain by what it leaves behind:
water on the sidewalks, muddy puddles by the trees.

The world reminds us of everything we might forget.
It says: everything clean must be dirtied again.
It says: you can’t be perfect; don’t try.

It says something about the light
not being able to choose its object.

“…When I was a child I rode my horse to the top of the mountain where the sun shone down on me, and the valley green in meadow grass lay far below. I looked to the sky and waited, filled with longing. Nothing sounded. In sorrow I lay down on the earth, my arms outstretched to hug it. O Earth, warm and just right, everything just right, the shape of bark, and smell of grass, and sound of leaves brushing the wind, I wanted to be just right too.”

Virgin and Child - from the workshop of Della-Robbia

Jon Brooks - Pair of “styx” ladder-back chairs

Virgin and Child Before a Rose Hedge - Pseudo-Pier Francesco Fiorentino