Category Archives: Digital Art

“Gulf View”

Between the striped walls of the canyon
Burns a crescent of blue water, arresting, poignant:
Jewel-blue,
soul of opals and sapphires;
Feather-blue,
stain of indigo on the peacock’s breast;
Flame-blue,
color that hovers above the copper-saturated drift-
wood in the beach-fire.
And the tall white poppy down the canyon
Sways against the blaze
Like a ship.

— by Grace Hazard Conkling (1878-1958)

“California Hills in August”

… …
And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion,
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.

And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain—
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.

— by Dana Gioia