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Tag Archives: Leon Miler

August 12, 2018
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alienmiler
Blogs and Musings
A. Leon Miler, Leon Miler, new mexico, socorro

A Song for Socorro

August 12, 2018 Blogs and Musings Leave a comment

A Song for Socorro

May good things come to you
Like rain on the mountain 
Where the streams overflow.

May good things come to you 
Like a song in the night 
When there’s dancing to be done, 
The plaza’s warm and love’s the light,

May good things come to you.

Come away with me my love,
The thunder’s quit rolling, 
The lightning’s on distant hills, 
The breeze blows cool in the valley 
Where the cottonwoods grow 
Beneath the stars spread like a cloud 
On a storm washed night.

Come away with me my love 
To the hills beyond where wild horses go, 
This night’s for freedom,
The day’s for toil,
We can leave foot prints in plowed Fields, 
No one will see, 
Save night hawks and owls.

In the hour of earnestness
Some strive for our souls,
Some for our votes.
Do the earnest ever laugh
For the pleasure of laughing?
Must every joke carry a knife
Hidden to hurt?
Can love songs ever be sung
Just for love?
Can dancing ever be done
Just for joy?

Awake, your time has come.
They’re singing on the plaza,
The band has struck the chord,
The dancing has begun.

May good things come to you 
Like a song in the night 
While there’s dancing yet to be done, 
The plaza’s warm and love’s the light;-

May good things come to you.

May He who made the morning star to shine 
And the evening star to set 
Bless you with a heart full of peace. 
May He who hung Pleiades with care 
Bless your children with warmth
When the winter brings chill.
May He who makes the sun to rise
Make your future clear
As the morning’s first light,
May you find delight in each breaking day.
May good things come to you.

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August 12, 2018
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alienmiler
Blogs and Musings
A. Leon Miler, blackbirds, crows, freedom, Leon Miler, ravens

Freedom is a Blackbird

August 12, 2018 Blogs and Musings Leave a comment

raven2

Freedom is a blackbird

living on the road,

eats what he eats for free,

and the rest he steals.

Freedom is a blackbird,

takes at any moment

only what can be taken,

and does not pursue the rest.

Passive in the face of what

cannot be won,

he sheds no tears for me

engaged in active futility.

What does freedom bring for gifts?

Freedom is perched up high

looking to take.

Freedom shall give nothing

but a wasted & wanton feather.

When freedom flies away

and I remain on the road,

and what remains

washes away in a winter rain

leaving me stranded

like yesterday’s news in a thornbush,

when freedom flies away

what will I say?

Is Freedom a bandit?

blackbirds

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August 11, 2018
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alienmiler
Blogs and Musings
A. Leon Miler, harmony, Leon Miler, reason, shakespeare

We were young and not to be denied….

August 11, 2018 Blogs and Musings Leave a comment

I met Reason once, when I was young. The night was a fine night, and I think I had a bit too much adult beverage, because I was feeling fanciful. We discussed things well into the early hours of the morning when I offered Reason a kiss. She told me to get lost, and we really haven’t discussed anything much since. Occasionally we cross paths in the grocery store, but that’s about it. As for rationality, if you divide 880 by 440 you get perfect harmony, but since art is not art if it’s perfect in every part, the 4th comes out to 1.3348 rather than a neat 1.333…, the 5th comes out to 1.4983 rather than a neat 1.5, and this is not even considering the minor 6th .

Shakespeare sang the blues, or, at least his sonnets do:

     Shakespeare Sang the Blues

Shakespeare Sang the Blues

(A) That (D) time of (A) year thou (D) mayst in me be- (A) hold

(E) When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

(D)Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

(A) Bare ruined choirs, where (E) late the sweet birds (A) sang.

All the wretched roaches of the choir stood to sing, rank on rank, down the sidewalk they came!  Like rosy cheeked choirboys, their diminutive voices ring harmoniously into the cooling night time air:

“That time of year”, they sang,

“thou mayest in me behold……”

And the leaves were falling, racing before the wind, sometimes flying, but in the end falling down to the sidewalk below.

A Night at Woodrat’s Cactus Inn:

Woodrat's Cactus Inn

Woodrat’s Cactus Inn

Bratney McDougal came dressed for the ball

His whiskers neatly combed

With top hat, white gloves and all.

Gayly he asked with whom he should dance,

Ah, such a night, with a promise of romance

Brittney Bryce was quite demure,- quiet and shy,

She stood in the corner with cookies and drinks nearby.

Love seemed certain as the setting sun

Waiting for the waltzes, the dancing’s begun.

The shrew snuck out the backdoor,

The skink was nervous to the core,

Dancing each step according to Hoyle,

Leading the lady as though she were royal,

Bratney McDougal swept Brittney Bryce

Clean off her feet three times and thrice

Singing:

Robin, robin, roses and run,

Round about and do it again,

Through the grass and under the sun,

Robin, robin, ribbon and rain,

You call the dance, we’ll play it through,

Too fast, too slow, you can’t complain,

Robin, robin, rushes and rue,

Call me your love, our love is true!

The night would have ended perfectly if a panicked quail hadn’t upset the drinks in her quite unsettled emotional state as she fled the Cactus Inn in unsettled haste, but all told, it was still a most excellent ball.

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August 11, 2018
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alienmiler
Blogs and Musings
lake oswego, Leon Miler, lood tide, oak grove, old bridges, railroad trestle, willamette river

The Trestle

August 11, 2018 Blogs and Musings Leave a comment

The Trestle pencil drawing by A. Leon Miler

Me and Bobby used to hang out at the railroad trestle that crossed the river between Oak Grove and Lake Oswego. We would climb the metal ladder that was attached to the cement pillar at the edge of the river, and climb off onto the 2 x 12 plank walkways that were on each level of the timber structure over the bank. I don’t know, maybe we were pirates. I don’t think so. Mostly we were just bored.

The bridge was only used a couple of times a day, hauling wood chips and sulfur to the paper mills 10 miles upstream. Sometimes we would cross over to the other side stepping tie to tie with nothing between them but a view of the water below. We always wondered what we would do if a train came while we were half way across. There was not enough room to get out of the way. It never happened though.

Bobby’s dad died when Bobby was 14. His dad was a drunk. He turned yellow and puked himself to death. Some people said he just never got over the war. I used to hull walnuts with him in the fall out on their front porch until my hands were all walnut brown. Then we’d take them up to the attic to dry among all the empty gallon Thunderbird wine bottles. He would always tell me stories about when he was a kid growing up in the hills. He never talked about the war, and no one ever asked. It was like it never happened.

He used to drive out to the potato fields and load the trunk of his car up with cull potatoes. He would always bring us a load. He was one of the nicest people I ever knew.

Everything in Bobby’s house smelled like wood smoke and bacon. It would even get into your clothes if you stayed long enough. Bobby’s Dad smoked Prince Albert pipe tobacco that he rolled up in Zig Zag papers. When his hands were steady, he did a masterful job. When they weren’t, I’d roll the tobacco for him. I wasn’t nearly as good as he was, but they worked.

We used to stay up all night long playing games of chance, a roll of the dice, the luck of the draw, seeing the lady’s face appear, a twist of fate, a wink, a nod,- the waters rippled on down stream over the monsters hidden in the deep; and when morning came, we rode our skateboards down Molalla Avenue in the rain over soggy yellow leaves flattened on the cement, hoping to avoid the pebbles that would lead to disaster. Sometimes we would end up at the library, sometimes we would end up at the river where the paper mills were, where fishermen fished for salmon in front of the waterfalls.

Bobby wanted to be a drummer. He didn’t have any drums but he had drumsticks. I was supposed to get a guitar, and we were going to play together, but after his dad died, his mom took him off to Washington State and I never saw him again. The last I heard, he was waiting tables in Seattle.

Mountain rivers are all roar and rush. In the spring they turn milky white, and turquoise from the melting snow. When the first green starts appearing, the salmon berries with the blooming trilliums and skunk cabbages always being among the first to show themselves. There is a certain perfumed smell to the woods through which the mountain rivers run, the dampness, the dripping rain. I can smell it still, a thousand miles away in the desert. The mountain rivers, they all join hands as they leave the hills behind and become a bigger river that ships from the ocean can sail up. The river where the trestle crossed ran deep, being squeezed in by basalt on either bank. The bank that people fished from was a basalt table that dropped vertically to the river’s bottom. When the tide pushed the river back, it would rise and cover the rocks. When it rained, it would pattern the water’s surface with a myriad of expanding circles. Sometimes, at the top of the tide, the water would turn mirror smooth, and yet the current still kept the floating debris moving on downstream. Just staring out over the water sometimes would do something to you way down deep inside, and you’d shiver even if you weren’t cold.

In the fall we moved away. Dad thought he had a cheap way to get rich. That didn’t really work out too well. He wrecked the trailer house and pickup in a storm in Kansas, and the service station he bought in Missouri burned down before he could take possession, so we went to Texas in a $200 old Ford, and the clothes on our back.

The last time I was at the trestle, it was raining and the water was running high. The seagulls had flown in from the coast ahead of a storm, and were contesting a dead fish with the some local ravens.

Bobby’s dad made me a blue stocking hat when he was in rehab at the Veteran’s Hospital the year before he died. I was wearing it when I got swept off a log into the ocean by a sneaker wave, and lost it.

The Flood at High Tide watercolor by A. Leon Miler

The Flood at High Tide watercolor by A. Leon Miler

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Recent Posts

  • A Rio Grande Fish Story (photos, art, and text by A. Leon Miler)
  • A Swallow’s Song:
  • There’s Restlessness In the Breeze…. (graphics and text by A. Leon Miler)
  • Platypus and Lady (graphics and text by A. Leon Miler)
  • Villanelle
  • A Song for Socorro
  • Freedom is a Blackbird
  • The Day that Billy Died
  • All for a Dream
  • We were young and not to be denied….
  • The Trestle
  • Box of Blackness
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