I was going to tell that story.
The one about the Gilded Age;
full of hungry westward destiny,
steel rails on stolen land.
About two Victorian fossil hunters,
Edward Drinker Cope
and Othniel Charles Marsh,
friends in youth, bitter in maturity.
They scoured the West
in search of dinosaur bones
to add to their collections
and burnish their reputations.
As a movie, I can see it,
the expeditions, the dynamite,
Wild West saloons, and the
brocaded parlors of the East.
And in parallel, like the tracks
across the continent,
the subjugation of the native
peoples of the land.
Big enough for Hollywood,
perhaps too big for me.
I could do something smaller;
just my camera and my eye,
follow my affinity
for the valley of my birth,
the orchards, crossroad hamlets,
the ditches that stitch the fields.
If that should be too much,
I love the feel of paint
escaping from the brush,
exploring shape and line,
the textures of the mind
mapped on canvas,
wood, or paper,
born from the hand.
If I don't revive these
shelved intentions,
one thing will survive,
I'll paint them all with words.
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