I am
unfurled canvas
engorged with
wild wind,
surging through
storm-tossed seas.

Welcome to Unfurled Canvas. This website is currently not being promoted or publicized online, so your presence here is serendipitous. I hope you find something that moves you and gives you grace.

I began Unfurled Canvas in part because I am haunted by two ghosts. The first is Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once wrote, “Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.”

I do not wish to die with all my music in me. Unfurled Canvas is where I sing.

The second ghost is George Gray, from poet Edgar Lee Masters:

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me–
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire–
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

I do not want my tombstone image to be a ship with furled sails, but a ship running under full canvas, plunging through the waves, driven by the wild wind. Unfurled Canvas is my attempt to “lift the sail and catch the winds of destiny.”

All posts here are drafts and could change as I continue tinkering with them. If something here moves you, please leave a comment to let me know.