The Poet's Room

  Tree Frog on a Stick          Mother's Day in the year 2022. Three years of continuing Covid and little contact with family my daughter-in-law came to celebrate along with her two sons. The grandsons  didn't start out strapping. Like all of us they began small red and wrinkled. Fresh out of the womb they'd begun crying to know why they had to leave such a snug home. Now nineteen and sixteen years later they've grown into strapping lads -- brothers two.      After a nice late brunch so that my wife and her daughter can talk we boys exited out the door. Our normal thing to do. When the lads were even smaller we'd leave mom and daughter to talk in a restaurant and go outside. We'd find something like pine cones to throw back and forth in the restaurant parking lot.      This time  I lead the lads on a walk over to the nature conservancy nearby. As usual as we walked and talked these two brothers started teasing each other. The younger picked up a small branch and

   A  school picture of  Maite Rodriguez at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. An honor roll student who dreamed of becoming a Marine Biologist. A picture that probably graced the refrigerator of her mother and grand parents.        As the shock passes after these mass shootings the urgency to get common sense gun reform done tends to wane. Pressure needs to be kept on politicians to get anything done. Those owned by the gun lobby frequently stall and delay while pretending to care about the children of this country. Each of us does what they can. The following lament  is what I can do to keep this life and death issue alive in hopes that meaningful gun reform gets done. I have posted the recording on YouTube.      Eighteen other students and two teachers also died. The names and pictures of those beautiful children and teachers are available on line.  Each one had a family that loved them and that they loved. These tragedies will continue unless we get meaningful gun reform done in thi

On Memorial Day we take time to remember those who served and fought for We The People. Our service men and women who stand for us against tyranny. World War II veterans now a dwindling number fought against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. The Civil War was fought to end slavery and maintain the country as the United States of America. Take a moment to consider those brave service men and women who willingly fought in those and other conflicts for us. They fought for a representative government. A form of Democracy that attempts to honor the citizens by respecting the Constitution and individual rights. Unfortunately we're now engaged in a different type of conflict. Nineteen grade school children slaughtered and two teachers in Uvalde,Texas bear witness with their bloody mutilated bodies to that ongoing violence. Ten black shoppers murdered just two days before that in Buffalo New York give testimony and witness with their blood. The list is long of those now sacrific

           Welcome to the Poet's Room, I'm Anthony Hendricks your host.  This painting titled "Passage" is my sister Judith's creation. The visual arts frequently stimulate a mixture of emotion and meaning that reach deep places in our psyche beyond logic and reason. They can touch the very core of our being. The place where mythology resides. The beginning of the story; how we rose from crude chemistry and matter into conscious life.           As human beings our consciousness demands that we express ourselves. We seek meaning and a means to express what we discover. The visual arts, music, song, dance, poetry and story telling go beyond simple entertainment and always have. The cave artists in Europe were not interested in just pretty pictures. Their paintings and pictographs expressed a developing consciousness of the world they knew and thought about 35,000 years ago.           Thirty-five thousand years seems to us who are short lived a long, long, very long