Don't be a Victim of Heart Disease, the Number One Killer

Back to health regimen after the holidays 

 Dr Abe V Rotor

Living with Nature - School on Blog

I have known people - a number of them relatives, 
co-workers and former classmates - who died of heart disease. 

If you have positive family history, you are a potential candidate to heart attack and its complications. Like Damocles Sword, you know the rules to live a long and happy life. There are ten factors you should be able to manage.

First,  Don't smoke.  Just don't. 

Second, Exercise.  Be active physically.  Get out of your comfort zone. 

Third, Reduce cholesterol level. Take less of meat and more fruits and vegetables.  

Fourth, Never indulge in drinking.  

                                                                                       

 Healthy heart angiogram (National Geographic)

Fifth, Live on healthy diet. Watch out your glucose level.

Sixth,  Maintain normal blood pressure always. 

  

Seventh, Don't be overweight.  Reduce. 

Eighth, Have regular medical checkup.

Ninth, Set a goal for your career and family.

Tenth, Have a positive outlook in life always. Reach out for life's meaning.  

Why don't you download this article, print and pin it as a daily reminder?

Flow gently, sweet little stream

Flow gently, sweet little stream

Painting and poem by Abe V Rotor

Dr Abe V Rotor

Flow gently, sweet little stream in acrylic (2' x 4') by AVR 2012

Flow gently, sweet little stream,
     and I will sing you a praise;
Flow gently down the little valley,
     and I will go with your ease.

Flow gently sweet little stream,
     for you have time to tarry;
Flow gently around rocks and hills,
     meander and be merry.

Flow gently, sweet little stream,
     and do not grow up too soon;
Flow gently with the watershed,
     catching the rains in monsoon.

Flow gently, sweet little stream,
     living link of sky and sea;
Flow gently among the creatures
     in your care, play and be free. 

Flow gently, sweet little stream,
     away from the hands of men;
Flow gently in this hidden den,
     this lovely patch of Eden. ~

Waterlilies - Monet's ultimate masterpiece in the twilight of his life

"I want the unobtainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat, and that's the end. They are finished. I want to paint the air which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat, the beauty of the air in which these objects are located, and that is nothing short of impossible." Claude Monet

Dr Abe V Rotor 
Acknowledgment: photos from the Internet, Wikipedia. 

Waterlilies - Claude Monet's Signature

Claude Monet (1840-1926); murals in a museum enshrine his fame.  

Monet painted his famous murals Waterlilies towards the end his long productive life as an impressionist. He worked with fading eyesight and in frail health. Few men have shown such an extraordinary feat.  Among them was the great modern painter Pablo Picasso. Ernest Hemingway's Nobel prize winning novel, The Old Man and the Sea, pictures such rare quality with sweet irony of anonymity.

What a genius to make a masterpiece with the last rays of the sun, 
drawing each like thread and weaving the aging colors of rainbow; 
while thousands at their bidding rise early to catch the rising sun,
aiming at fortune - and failing - search it at the end of the rainbow. ~

  

 
  

  

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.

Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows.

 Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it. Claude Monet

Oscar-Claude Monet (1840-1926) was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. November 1840, Paris, France

DON'T KILL THE PALM TREES THIS PALM SUNDAY! An Appeal to Christendom

DON'T KILL THE PALM TREES THIS PALM SUNDAY! 

An Appeal to Christendom. Plant Trees Instead 

Dr Abe V Rotor

Please don't destroy Nature. Don't kill the palm trees and endangered species (Cycads, buri, others).

This is also an appeal addressed to the Church, the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) and other agencies whose functions are related. Ostentatious celebration of Palm Sunday is detrimental to the coconut industry, and the endangerment, if not extinction of palms, among them buri and anahaw - and the living fossil Cycad or oliva.

 

Notice that most of the palaspas held by the faithful are young 

leaves or bud leaves of coconut and buri.

 

Palaspas in different designs made of young leaves of coconut, and the endangered buri (Corypha elata) and anahaw (Livistona rotondifolia) species, are sold in the open on Palm Sunday. A large percentage of palaspas ends in waste which otherwise could be made into gainful products.

How can we help save the palm trees?

1. Don't patronize palaspas made of young or bud leaves (white to yellow green to pale green, supple and easy to wilt).

2. Get only those with deep green color - they are of mature leaves. There is not much harm to tree, if the number of leaves harvested is regulated. Heavily pruned trees recover slow and their fruiting is drastically affected.

3. Never buy palaspas made from whole leaves of oliva and other Cycad species - they are highly endangered. Actually they are living fossils, older than the dinosaur.

4. Reject also buri, it is the raw material of home industries making mats, buntal hat, bags, decors, broom, and many others. You will be depriving hundreds of families of their livelihood.

5. Anahaw, nipa (Nypha frutescens), bunga (Areca catechu), sugar palm (Arenga pinnata) likewise provide the industries of many more families. They are the sources of alcohol, wine, vinegar, brushes, fabric and cordage, medicine and drugs, fuel and activated charcoal, and many others. You can be of great help to these industries and thousands of people depending on them.

6. Why carry a whole bunch of palaspas when a handy size or even "feather-size" for that matter is a sufficient manifestation of sincere devotion?

7. One palaspas for a family is enough, not one for each member. Save the trees, save money and effort, and avoid thrash. Have you noticed how unsold palaspas are thrown away or burned?

8. Use substitute materials, like ornamental palms - palmera, red palm, bunga de Jolo, MacArthur palm, and several species of Pinanga and Orania. The reason palm is used on Palm Sunday is because in the place of Christ in His time, few plants survive the harsh desert condition - date palm and olive among them which grow in oases, pockets of spring in the desert.

9. Your effort in this campaign can be translated in practical economics and ecological significance. The coconut is the source of many products from walis tingting (broom made of midribs), to virgin coconut oil. There are one-hundred-and-one coconut products. Its ecological significance is tremendous. It's one crop you don't take care at all. It ripraps the shorelines from tidal wave and rising sea level. Physiologically the coconut plant can filter off toxic metals, pesticide residues, hydrocarbon compounds, and other toxic substances. No crop is more versatile worldwide - and the Philippines is endowed with this gift of nature.

10. Talk to your priest or minister, take this matter up with your church organizations. Be assertive, this is vital to our environmental and socio economic problems. Support this campaign collectively, as a community effort. Course it through the heirarchy of the church, if necessary. Make press releases and broadcast on TV and radio.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Palm trees are the frontliners on shorelines and estuaries against tidal wave and tsunami as observed with coconut trees riprapping the land from sea, nipa grove blanketing deltas and mudflat arresting soil from being washed away to the sea. They provide a nursery and sanctuary to both terrestrial and marine organisms.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How much do we lose from a single coconut tree sacrificed on one occasion?

A fruiting coconut normally lives for twenty years, others twice as long. Nuts are harvested every two months with 10 nuts to as many as 30. Young nuts (buko) are sold P30 each); commercial mature nuts for copra (to be made into vegetable oil) sell for the same price, ex-farm.

Here is an actual case: Buko at P30, and 100 nuts harvested a year is worth P3,000. Double the yield or the price means P6,000 a year. That's P60,000 for ten years for a single tree. Double that if the tree lives for another ten years.

For mature nuts (picked up on the farm), the farmer gets half the value, but he simply waits for the nuts to mature. Meantime, he plants between the nuts cash crops and high value crops (coffee, cacao, papaya, root crops, vegetables lanzones) and gets additonal, if not more income. This is only possible in a coconut grove.
------------------------------------
A coconut plantation is the only man-made agricultural ecosystem with a very high biodiversity, that can be sustained generation after generation. (AVR)
------------------------------------
It is safe to estimate that on just one occasion when thousands and thousands of coconut trees in the tropics are sacrificed, the potential loss runs to hundreds of millions of dollars. It means poverty and death, erosion and landslide, loss of shorelines and farmlands, deprivation of people from the opportunities to enjoy the good life.

Let's join the campaign: Let's save the palm trees on Palm Sunday (and thereafter, for that matter).

 

LEFT PHOTO: A stand of buri palm.  A buri palm lives up to a century. Before it dies, it profusely produces an inflorescence that turns out thousands of nuts. The nuts are transported by water and animals to new places where they germinate and grow. It takes at least five years to gain a niche in the new place. 

RIGHT PHOTO: Cycad or Oliva, is older than the extinct dinosaurs, hence it is called living fossil. During the Triassic and Jurassic periods, the time of their greatest population density and diversity, cycads made up 20% of the world's flora. Photo taken by the author in Lagro, QC. NOTE: This tree was killed by palaspas gatherers. 

Article from Paper read during the Capiz Archdiocesan Gathering of the Clergy by the author as Conference Speaker August 4, 2011.
Reference: Living with Nature Book Series, AVRotor 2004, 2007

Prayer Without Words

Crucified Christ, St Paul University, QC

You may be living with a Death-Watch Beetle

It’s like an Edgar Allan Poe’s story of death tapping on “a night dark and dreary”, but in this case it is not a raven.

Dr Abe V Rotor

It is the death-watch Beetle (Xestobium rufovillosum) that is alluded to death. It is an insect with a scary habit all right. The name was derived from the tapping sound it produces, which is frequently heard during mating period, usually in April or May.

Death-watch Beetle (Xestobium rufovillosum),

approximately 20 x magnification.

The beetle simply jerks its body forward in rapid succession, and strikes each time with the lower front part of its head against the surface on which it happens to be standing. It gives eight taps in slightly less than a second; and almost before it stops another beetle of its kind that is within hearing distance will respond by tapping back in the same quick manner. In woodwork and furniture that have been attacked by the death-watch Beetle, the worm holes are large and distinguished by the presence of frass and powder around the openings.

The beetles are from one-fourth to one-third of an inch in length, dark brown in color, spotted and banded irregularly with thick patches of short yellow gray hairs. Pairing takes place after the beetles have made their exit from the wood, and they die a few weeks later, the female in the meantime having laid some 70 eggs. The tapping is of the nature a sexual call, and may be repeated over and over for quite a long time. Grating sound may also be heard as the larvae gnaw on wood inside its tunnel. It takes three years to complete the insect’s life cycle.

A more familiar beetle, Anobium punctatum, is called powder post or furniture beetle, named after the dust it scatters at the mouth of its tunnel on furniture.

Well, it's just the death-watch beetle or the powder post beetle; there's nothing to fear about.

But don't wait until your furniture falls apart, or your house falls down. ~

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Warm water soothes itchy and sore throat, arrests coughing.

Dr Abe V Rotor

Don’t take medicated drops or syrup for your itchy or sore throat. 

All you need is warm water which you sip now and then to relieve your throat and to stop your coughing.  

Have a thermos of hot water at hand.  Just add to tap water the same amount of hot water.  The warm water is  approximately 50 to 60 degrees Celsius. This temperature is within the Pasteurization temperature range that kills or immobilizes harmful bacteria - but not the beneficial ones.   

Drink warm water liberally to replace water loss and restore metabolite balance while helping the body eliminate waste and toxin.  
Acknowledgement: Wikipedia, ADAM Internet for images 

Common streptococcus bacteria 

Acknowledgement: Internet images 

Home remedy for wounds and sores

Dr Abe V Rotor

 

Common moss 

Poultice made of moss heals wounds and relieves pain.
This is a common practice in the highlands where moss is plentiful and luxuriantly growing. Fresh moss is crashed into a pulp and directly applied on a fresh or infected wound, loosely wrapping it with gauze or cloth strip. common moss 

Lourdes V. Alvarez in her masteral thesis at the University of Santo Tomas demonstrated the effectiveness of moss (Pogonatum neesi) against Staphylococcus bacteria, the most common cause of infection. Moss extract contains flavonoids, steroids, terpenes and phenols, which are responsible for the antibiotic properties of this lowly, ancient bryophyte.   

Poultice made of ground termite is effective for wounds and sores. 
After digging out an anthill or termite mound, the soldier termites (large headed) are carefully gathered, and ground into a paste which is then directly applied on the wound or skin sore. In some parts of Africa, the United Nations for successfully treating thousands of residents in remote desert communities using the same ethnic remedy hailed a village healer (equivalent to our herbolario). Laboratory tests revealed that termite poultice contains antibiotics more potent than commercial antibiotics.

Acknowledgement: Internet photos 

6 Stories of Childhood, a Personal Experience

1. Paper wasps on the run! Or was it the other way around?
2. Watching war planes in dogfight.
3. The Case of the Empty Chicken Eggs
4. The caleza I was riding ran over a boy.
5. Eugene and I nearly drowned in a river.
6. Trapping edible frogs
Dr Abe V Rotor

1. Paper wasps on the run! Or was it the other way around?

This happened to me, rather what I did, when I was five or six - perhaps younger, because I don’t know why I attack a colony of putakti or alimpipinig (Ilk). It was raw courage called bravado when you put on courage on something without weighing the consequences. It was hatred dominating reason, motivated by revenge.

I was sweeping the yard near a chico tree when I suddenly felt pain above my eye. No one had ever warned me of paper wasps, and I hadn’t been stung before. I retreated, instinctively got a bikal bamboo and attacked their papery nest, but every time I got close to it I got stung. I don’t know how many times I attacked the enemy, each time with more fury, and more stings, until dad saw me. I struggled under his strong arms sobbing. I was lucky, kids my size can’t take many stings. There are cases bee poison can cause the heart to stop.

2. Watching war planes in dogfight.

It was the last year of WWII, 1945. I was going four at that time and the images of planes fighting are still vivid today. Toward the east is the Cordillera range that looked blue in the distance. The view was clear from our house, and hideout. Even if the old San Vicente church partly got across our view, we saw now and then warplanes passing above. It was also the first and only time I saw a double body aircraft flying. There was at least one occasion warplanes fought somewhere above Vigan, and a plane simply bursts in flame and dark smoke. My dad prodded us to go back to our underground hideout.

When I was in high school I had a teacher in literature, Mrs. Socorro Villamor. She was the widow of war hero, Col. Jesus Villamor, one of the greatest Filipino pilots in WWII. After downing several Japanese planes, his own plane was hit and he died in the crash. Camp Villamor was named in his honor. My classmate and I wondered why Mrs. Villamor was often wearing black. At one time she recited for us Flow Gently Sweet Afton. She even sang it, and then came to a halt sobbing. We were all very quiet and let her recover. I could only imagine that up there fighting the Japanese is the great Colonel Villamor, whom my teacher was still mourning ten years after.

I believe that the pain she was then carrying made her the best literature teacher I have ever met. Today I still can recite a dozen selected passages from great American and English poets, and my favorite comes from Flow Gently Sweet Afton. Now and then in my lonely moments I hum its plaintive melody.

3. The Case of the Empty Chicken Eggs

Soon as I was big enough to climb the baqui (brooding nest) hanging under the house and trees. I found out that if I leave as decoy one or two eggs in the basket, the more eggs you gather in the afternoon. Then a new idea came. With a needle, I punctured the egg and sucked the content dry. It tasted good and I made some to substitute the natural eggs for decoy.

Dad, a balikbayan after finishing BS in Commercial Science at De Paul University in Chicago, called us on the table one evening. "First thing tomorrow morning we will find that hen that lays empty eggs.”

It was a family tradition that every Sunday we had tinola - chicken cooked with papaya and pepper (sili) leaves. Dad would point at a cull (the unproductive and least promising member of the flock) and I would set the trap, a baqui with a trap door and some corn for bait. My brother Eugene would slash the neck of the helpless fowl while my sister Veny and I would be holding it. The blood is mixed with glutinous rice (diket), which is cooked ahead of the vegetables.

That evening I could not sleep. What if dad’s choice is one of our pet chicken? We even call our chickens by name. The empty eggs were the cause of it all, so I thought.

In the morning after the mass I told dad my secret. He laughed and laughed. I didn't know why. I laughed, too. I was relieved with a tinge of victorious feeling. Thus the case of the empty eggs was laid to rest. It was my first “successful” experiment.

In the years to come I realized you just can’t fool anybody. And by the way, there are times we ask ourselves, “Who is fooling who?”

4. The caleza I was riding ran over a boy.
Basang, my auntie yaya and I were going home from Vigan on a caleza, a horse carriage. I was around five or six years old, the age children love to tag along wherever there is to go. It was midday and the cochero chose to take the shorter gravelly road to San Vicente by way of the second dike road that passes Bantay town. Since there was no traffic our cochero nonchalantly took the smoother left lane fronting a cluster of houses near Bantay. Suddenly our caleza tilted on one side as if it had gone over a boulder. To my astonishment I saw a boy around my age curled up under the wheel. The caleza came to a stop and the boy just remained still and quiet, dust covered his body. I thought he was dead. Residents started coming out. I heard shouts, some men angrily confronting the cochero. Bantay is noted for notoriety of certain residents. Instinct must have prodded Basang to take me in her arms and quickly walked away from the maddening crowd. No one ever noticed us I supposed.

5. Eugene and I nearly drowned in a river.

There was a friendly man who would come around and dad allowed him to play with us. People were talking he was a strange fellow. We simply did not mind. He was a young man perhaps in his twenties when Eugene and I were kids in the early grades in San Vicente. One day this guy (I forgot his name) took us to Busiing river, a kilometer walk or so from the poblacion. The water was inviting, what would kids like best to do? We swam and frolicked and fished, but then the water was steadily rising so we had to hold on the bamboo poles staked in the water to avoid being swept down by the current. I held on tightly, and I saw Eugene doing the same on a nearby bamboo pole. The guy just continued fishing with his bare hands, and apparently had forgotten us. Just then dad came running and saved us. We heard him castigate the fellow who, we found out that he mentally retarded that he didn’t even realized the extreme danger he put us in.

6. Trapping edible frogs

It was fun to trap frogs when I was a kid. I would dig holes in the field, around one and one-half feet deep, at harvest time. Here the frogs seek shelter in these holes because frogs need water and a cool place. Insects that fall in to the hole also attract them. Early in the morning I would do my rounds, harvesting the trapped frogs. Frogs are a favorite dish among Ilocanos especially before the age of pesticides. The frog is skinned, its entrails removed, and cooked with tomato, onion and achuete (Bixa orellana) to make the menu deliciously bright yellow orange.

Acknowledgement: Internet photos

Poetry: Clay

 Dr Abe V Rotor

Diego and Gabriela Silang Ilocano Heroes, Santa, Ilocos Sur

Fr Miguel de Benavides, founder of UST 1611

Knead and mold, knead and mold,

Time may tarry with its demand;

Let not the clay sit still, I am told,

and wait for the child to be man.

Knead and mold, knead and mold,

Again and again, and trying still;

Godly and oblate, lovely to behold,

For Heaven's sake, don't move the keel. ~

AVR Part 1 - NATURE Paintings with Verses by Dr Abe V Rotor

   DOVES IN THE BLUE SKY

Painting in acrylic ( 29.5” x 24.5”)

Fly high and spread peace

 before the coming of storm,

 truce in the battlefield,

brotherhood its norm. 

WHERE HAS THE PAINTER GONE?

Painting in acrylic by a child participant in an art

workshop conducted by the author in his residence

in San Vicente, Ilocos Sur, 2016.  The abandoned

palette board was later discovered under a mango

tree where on-the-spot sessions were held.

 

 Work of art abandoned,

a brush with the paint dry

on a palette board;

“Where has the painter gone?

Had he taken the canvas,

in lieu of a masterpiece?”

 FIREWORKS GARDEN

Painting in acrylic (15.5” X 32”)

Celebration in foliage and blossom

In some corner of Eden, Behold!

 Green thumb has made to bloom;

Move over flash and thunder bold.

STILL LIFE

Painting in acrylic (24.5 x 32”)

Fruits from different lands and seasons,

gifts to man Ceres and Epicurus gave

for his health and many other reasons;

from which too, the best wines are made.

RED SUN IN THE FOREST

Painting in acrylic (11” x 14”)

  

Green umbrella against global warming,

man’s primitive dwelling;

he has all reasons to revive this craving

as it was in the beginning.

         

                         WATERSHED

Painting in acrylic (19.5” x 30”)

 I paint the stream laugh and cry,

     and hiss over the rock;

 the clouds on the mountain high, 

     down the sea and back.

Sun and rain the life of the stream,

     the hills and watershed,

music of the wind and sunbeam

     shining over our head. ~    

BOUQUET

Painting in acrylic (17.5” x 18.5”)

Bouquet - how fresh,
picked for vase or lei;
how withered and shy
at the end of day.

Bouquet - how missed
the bee, the butterfly
in the garden, the rainbow
in the sky.. ~

NATURE Paintings with Verses by Dr Abe V Rotor

TOO SOON THE BUD OPENS

Painting in acrylic (12" x 17")

You come in springtime and autumn, 

    too eager a bud  ahead of your time; 

what promise of life awaits tomorrow

    from where you've broken through?

Whichever path you take from now,

    you'll miss the adventure of youth 

in summer, and stillness of winter,

    Oh, how could you live to the full?  

"For having lost but once your prime,

    you'll always tarry," so says a poet;

"It's now or never," so sings a bard,

    and I, I've neither a poem nor a song.

A HEART ON THE WALL

Painting in acrylic (16.5" x 18")

Oh, heart on the wall

     do you still feel?

Do you still throb -

     the throb of love?

Ivy, ivy on the wall,

     don't hide 

     a living heart.

GRASS  

Painting in acrylic (18" x 21")   

Sway with the breeze,

     dance with the wind;

         Greet the sun with dewdrops

     clinging;

In summer turn golden, 

     and bow,

And die sweetly to feed 

     the world. 

A LOVELY PAIR IN A BOWER

 Painting in acrylic (11.5" X 16") 

 

                                              

                                 Let the world go by in their bower, 

lovers blind to the busy world,

away from the maddening crowd; 

fleeting moment is forever, 

to this pair in their lair.

Wonder in our midst who we are,

blind to each other, but the world,

strange this crowd we are in;

where's this lovely pair, 

where's their bower?    

SYMBIOSIS

Pisces and Echinoderms 

Painting in acrylic (8" X 10") 

Distant in phylogeny, yet live they together

in one community we call ecology,

ever since the beginning of our living world,

millions of years ago before man was born

to rule, to reign supreme over all creation; 

wonder what Homo sapiens means 

to true peace and harmony 

beyond his rationality.  

SEA URCHIN

Painting in acrylic ( 11"  x  13.5") 

You're all made of spikes,

     I can't see the real you;

in your invincible armor

     in any view. 

Wonder how many of us

     live like the urchin

in silent, unknown ways

     and never seen.

SECRET OF THE HEART

Painting in Acrylic (13.5" x 13.5")

Hidden, the heart throbs

     in deep silence;

two nails embedded,

     unseen in pretence

of living, loving, caring,

     the highest art, 

filling the five chambers

     of the heart.  

INNOCENCE IN NATURE

Painting in acrylic (17.5" x 21.75") 

Abstract over realism can you paint innocence,

     move over classics, you are too pure

to be true, and impressionism too assuming,

     with apologies to Monet's azure sky.  

Oh! abstract indeed is a child's innocence,

     buds in early spring, grains ripening;

heart of a true friend, pledge of real love,

     growing in the passing of time. 

Colors are mere symbols, wanting to behold,

     the magnificence of mind and heart,

triumph of the human spirit over our frailty,

     the most challenging of all art.~      

   

ART OF THE CATERPILLAR

Painting in acrylic (11” x 14”)

Caterpillar, when you are gone

two things come to mind:

the butterfly you have become,

and the damage you have done
and left behind.

Art, art, whatever way defined,

the subject on the wall,

or dripping on the floor,

art, art you aren't hard to find
after all. ~

WEANING

Painting in acrylic (8” x 10”)

A trio in adventure weaned out

     of their nest too soon;

to explore the world beyond,

     like the Prodigal Son.

What lies in the deep and dark

     cavern with many eyes,

but monsters real or imagined

     lurking for a prize.

It’s inevitable stage of life,

     all creatures undergo;

weaning - crossing the bridge

     and cutting it, too.

FISH SWARMING           

          Painting in acrylic (9” x 17”)

 

I’ve seen jellyfish swarming,

Plankton in coral reefs glowing;

a myriad fireflies mingling

with the stars, linking us all

to a Supreme Being. ~