HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAN FERNANDO VALLEY POET AND PLAYWRIGHT WILLARD SIMMS FEBRUARY 22

Post card of the Mission San Fernando Rey de España - c 1930s - Gift to the Museum from Gerald Fecht 2008

Three poems by Willard Simms, member of the Board of Directors of The Museum of the San Fernando Valley and Chair of the Museum's Performing Arts Committee.

EVER TOGETHER (For Rania)
The soul can seldom sleep alone.
The body hunts its nest, curls up, and purrs
But the soul must keep perusing the palette of human experience
Searching for its complementary color.


Are we blue - you and I?
The sky at noon, reflecting heat but not absorbing it.
Or are we the soft hued crimson of twilight?
A splash of brief intensity 

Within the silhouette of a darkening sky.
I only know that when I rest with you in the deep Nightness
I feel at home.
Not alone.

No longer separate but joined with all living forms.
Past, present, and future unite 
At one moment in the bed where we commingle, forever.
Willard Simms Copyright ©2008

THE FLY FISHERMAN

I kneel at the bank
 Not - to make a deposit
 But a trout withdrawal.


Dark stones in water
Grow fins, a tail - are darting
To sip their dinner.


They fin the clear water
The nymph dives, stops - is eaten
The magic begins.


The rod lifts and a
Rainbow - too big to be here,
Splashes in frenzy.


Feathers and thread joining
On a hook - became alive
Then were trout eaten.


My fish swims away
The moment frozen by film
His legend begins.
Willard Simms Copyright ©2008


UNTITLED
I look through my window at the blueberry hue

Of the sky outside as the light fades to gray

And the water begins to dissolve the new day

Into a California Fall, where summer flew - away.

Willard Simms Copyright ©2008