History, Natural History & the Arts
George Cassidy Payne is an independent writer, domestic violence counselor, and adjunct instructor in the humanities at Finger Lakes Community College.
George's blogs, essays, letters, poems, and photographs have been published in a wide variety of national and international outlets such as USA Today, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Buffalo News, Albany Times-Union, Syracuse Post Standard, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, The Toronto Star, The Minority Reporter, Chronogram Journal, Ovi Magazine, CounterPunch, Moria Poetry Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, and more.
George's first book of poetry, A Time Before Teachers, is available at Amazon.com.
Atammayata
Birth and death, love and hate, the burnt scent
of cloves on fingers and campfire on jeans,
nothing is attached for long.
In the butter-soft leather light of purple fog,
a royal procession of swans announces themselves.
Not made of that, the lake is restless for now
Opal
Come to the surface,
O dear stone, the time
to appreciate each other
is nearly over.
Barn’s Burned Down
Now I see the moon,
in this burning heap of cinder block and timber,
this cataclysm, this crush,
this dense mass of silent consciousness,
I see you, my beloved, your wide
deep sapphire eyes.
The period we have to appreciate
each other is nearly over.
Transmigration
When we rediscover the way to shed
our bodies, to become exoskeleton,
molten from the nymph stage, reborn,
boundless in reality, radiant, aflame,
differences are just words,
the arrow and the aim become one.
Son of Man
I am the one
who does not flinch
at the thought of
being eaten alive
with nowhere to hide
like the cry of a
whale dying on the
other side of the world
Samsara
Bestowing only
impressions of sorrow,
in the butter soft leather light
of new fog,
a royal procession of swans
announce themselves.
Birth and death.
Nothing is attached for long.
A Separation
Peering into
the shoe polish black
emptiness of stars,
from the last plank
of an old seaside dock, the man
never felt so alone and so sure.
Having learned at last
what it means to be comfortable
on a lazy Sunday afternoon,
the ocean is restless.
The Bobcat
Without pride, senses controlled,
born or to be born, we met as hilarious strangers,
each wanting something impossible.
I wanted all beings like you to be happy.
You wanted no being to deceive another.
For a brief moment, we were sincere.
Both of us, protected against the spirits of the dead,
on a darkened street, on the outskirts of the city,
waiting to cross over
Leaving the Tunnel
Nothing we see is color
Cezanne said that
but no one believed him
All we really see is light
The mineral-laden earth
with its zillions of herbal
veins and carnivorous flowers
mere pinpoints of light
reverberations of molecular light
adorned with ornaments
of human bones
What You Cannot Help Naming
Hiking with children, in a nature park at noon,
the world is sparkling and synth-laden.
Without trying, the sacred ibis of thought is upon them,
as their fingerprints singe burn marks of poetry in the bark of trees.
To them, pine needles are hairbrushes for unicorns.