This tree on the left foregrounds a view of Gobong, a prominent hill in Ilsan, my former Korean home. You can see the distinctive radio tower on the mountain. Nestled at the foot of the radio tower is the Yeochan Temple, which I often visited. I took this picture in Jeongbalsan Park a few blocks from my apartment in October, 2015.
Day: April 30, 2020
Caveat: Art #4
This ink drawing is of the fountain in the backyard of my paternal ancestors’ old home in San Marino, on California Boulevard. I drew this when living there in 1992. The house was torn down a few years later.
Caveat: Poem #1369 “Curtailment”
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The rain had washed the world all clean:
from the trees' branches hung blinded eyes,
but mud-scrubbed stones held the road.
A bird sang suggestions, remained unseen:
a purple fog had captured the skies,
but a sun peered through a mist that flowed.
I walked up the gravel road a ways:
feeling as if reduced in size
by the looming trees with their secret code.
That rain had fallen for many days:
time's old load.
– a curtal sonnet. I’m not sure how well I did. I tried to imitate the form invented by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, with a four-foot “sprung rhythm” and 10 1/2 lines.