RAÚL SÁNCHEZ
Art is Life
Everything found in nature is art.
Colorful shapes, mysterious as the wind-swept landscapes.
Old growth trees whose branches sweep the wind
repeating the stories sung by the hawks, eagles,
gulls, blue jays, chickadees, hummingbirds and crows.
Their feathers flutter as they fall, softly,
like dandelion fuzees landing gently on the hard ground.
The spark within the human mind ignites,
with color and light describing the beauty,
the calm, the ebb and flow of the ocean waves.
Art can reveal those mysteries.
Like the ovary, pistil, filament, and anther of a flower.
Only the artist can describe through music and song.
The poet uses his senses to paint the sky with words.
The artist’s brush paints what he/she feels.
The dancer dances interpreting such art.
Art is the language of the soul.
Violin Class
Leaving Home
It is time to depart, time to embark
new places, different faces
the future awaits beyond the horizon.
Long gone are the days when I played
marbles on the street, kicked the can,
played ball with a stick.
I remember—
how I used to play
knight games riding horses,
pretending to be armored
bearded men with long swords,
saving weeping children and maidens
from the black forest.
Where ravenous dogs chased
gloomy silhouettes out of the dark.
Child’s game of fantasy lived
around the tree house.
I will remember the brown house
the cul-de-sac, the earth songs mother sang.
Backyard birds chirping songs
dancing rain on the front deck
memories woven in my befuddled brain.
The world looked safe from within that house.
The time has come to sail away—
with the flying keel
steadfast
into no man’s land.