Veils of Morning

                                          First light upon my own field,

                                          Mists of the night slow to lift,

Dew dripping from the flowers

Spilling over the stone wall,

When I walk through the grass

I can see where I've been.

This is nothing like

The City of Light.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

How can you not admire an ancient race

of high-cheekboned beings in love

with books and bicycles,

with the spoken word

and the hand-written letter,

with conversation,

good food locally grown,

and better wine,

with art, and beauty,

with dignity, self-respect,

self-sufficiency, moderation,

and especially with "liberty,

equality, brotherhood"

over their grand entrances?

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Impressions

Monet, as if minding the shop

I rode the train from Paris to Vernon, then a bicycle to Giverny,

getting lost only once before finding Monet's garden where

the line was so long

and static that I

pedaled up the hill

and found a road

less traveled and yes

yes that made

all the difference

not that the garden

wasn't beautiful and not

that the pond wasn't

everything I'd expected

and that's exactly it

I have learned to prefer the rough beauty of the unkempt,

the disorderly tangle of the untended, home to the unexpected.

The great painter was nearly blind when he painted the largest of his famous works.

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The Pompidou

double click where you dare.

From the top of the  Centre Pompidou

Paris spreads out beneath you,

and in the floors below

works of the 20th Century's

great artists are displayed

in a hundred rooms,

Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealsim,

Abstraction, Dadaism, and

unexpected studies in Realism

which have yet to be titled.

As always, the best works of art

are the people.

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Kisses for Oscar

Wandering without a map in the City of the Dead,

entombment of Delacroix, Chopin, and Jim Morrison,

of Gertrude Stein and Marcel Proust, I find the grave

of Oscar Wilde gaudy with lipstick, and a placard

warning against defacement -- ignored;

the young, their souls thick with longing,

have yielded to temptation in order to be rid of it,

and failed, as they will do and will do even as the old.

Scenes in the Cimetiére du Pére LaChaise, Paris.

Sunday in Paris

Double click to enlarge; Jardin du Luxembourg.

Notre Dame.

Awakening in the Sunday sun

On the grounds of Marie de Medicis,

10,000 reading and dozing and strolling,

Garden of a thousand dialects,

And not a harsh word to be heard,

A day of rest in the Old World.

Follow me into the gallery,

Formerly the hothouse for oranges,

And let us consider each other.

Self portrait, with horses by Antione Schneck.

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Night Rain

Standing on the city's oldest bridge in the night rain,

The  city feeling just as I had imagined it,

While on the street past the Sorbonne, young Parisians

Standing in line to savor an American breakfast,

Just as they had imagined it, all of us

Captive to the allure of the exotic.

Double-click to enlarge.

Pont Neuf, built 1578-1604.

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How to be Parisian

Rue d' Annonciation in Passy

Eat fresh food

Outside if you can,

Walk everywhere,

Mind you manners,

Ride the Metro

When you must,

Or a scooter, or a bicycle,

Have a glass of wine with lunch,

A whole bottle with dinner,

Expect the exceptional,

Only smile when it's real,

Love friends like family,

Revere art and artists,

Work four days a week,

Make August a holiday,

Live a life of the mind,

Revel in the senses,

And do it all with style.

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The Senses

Place de la Contrescarpe

Massages are free

after sunset

in the square

built over a moat,

and you witness

the power of touch,

immediate and

compelling, even

between strangers

who's words

have weak meaning.

Élan Vital

Tattoo parlor in Paris. Double-click to enlarge

The French

elevate

everything

into art;

pursuit

of beauty

a virtue

even

in vice.

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Parisii

"All the French have left Paris,

and the city is full of only tourists,"

the shopkeeper says, and so it seems.

But just a few blocks off the boulevards,

the natives are busy being themselves,

some on the banks of the Seine where people

have lived for at least 40,000 years,

water creatures drawn to water on this water planet.

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Latin Quarter

Look at the sky,

Says the art in the street,

But if that were the view

That most roused the spirit,

All the chairs in the café

Would lie on their backs.

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