Saturday, November 1, 2025
I celebrated another birthday this past month by making a trip to Northern California to visit my painter friends, Jim McVicker and Terry Oats. While we had gotten together several time when they made trips to Southern California, this was the first time in 30 years that I had seen them where they live. In 1995, I posed for a painting Jim did in which I was kneeling in his garden. On this trip, I posed for a portrait, though it was not the first time I had done so. Back in 1981, when I first met Jim, I posed for a portrait. There are references to being painted that first time in a long poem I wrote called “Your Move,” which will be published in its entirety for the first time along with two other long poems in a book entitled REMIGES in the fall of 2026. The publisher is WHAT BOOKS, a collective of writers in Los Angeles that recently published books by my collegues at CSULB, Patty Seyburn and Stephen Cooper.
(1981)
PORTRAIT IN McVICKER’S GARDEN
My face cannot be finished. Two days
I’ve stared and slouched near cusps
of dahlias, foxgloves creamed with red,
my chest and shoulders swelling
in a dark shirt, jeans trenched
between white petals as each slides
an edge under another’s wavering
fan of points — “It’s not working,”
he says, lifting the canvas off.
As I kneel on a narrow stone path,
the wetness of mud seeps through
my pants, sipping up my thighs.
A big hat darkens my chin. Yellow
peonies uncoil. A leaf isn’t smooth,
but puckers from edge to spinal thread.
Light scuffs the repetition
until color roughens: lilac squats,
orange puffs, yellow crouches
in creased gourds, thick husks
of amber, shrill asperities,
stretched greys, pink’s ziggurats,
lips parted for your garden’s kiss.
This poem can be found in my previous book of poems from WHAT BOOKS: “The Headwaters of Nirvana.”
In the next two months, I will be proofreading REMIGES and making plans for giving readings in the fall of 2026. If I have been able to sustain my efforts as a poet all these decades, it is in part because of friends such as Jim and Terry. I am grateful for their companionship and encouragement.
About Bill Mohr