Aerial tempest,
your swirling damp twisting
and dancing in the sky,
rages a fury above
but your rake is not felt
save for a wind.
You echo your salty sister below,
her currents and tides
a reconing force of their own.
A surging power of
unimagined size.
But life is begun,
and life is ended,
above and below
with violence and love,
end to end
again, again
and again.
Aeternum.
© William Bushell 2021
Don’t Turn Your Back.
Some say don’t turn your back.
The earth,
The sea,
The mother of us all.
Our birthplace, our creator.
No, don’t turn your back
on the one that is all.
The father and the mother
the one that we kill—
Destroy in our haste.
We are lost— or mostly so if
time is not ours to have.
Forward must be forward
not to lose any longer.
Do not turn your back.
We can not turn our back.
The beginning was too precious.
© William Bushell
The initial inspiration for my latest series of paintings and drawings was the visual experience of the seaside. The distant distortions that manifest in the oddest ways. The shoreline, the clouds, the ships and sailboats, a bunch of kites scratching away at the sky. And the experience is heightened because all of your senses are in overload. But inevitably the working surface dictates what will be. A bit of cut paper from the studio floor finds its way on. A drawn line will always tell its own tale, but all the while the ocean experience is there nudging the story.
A Shape so Real
We look but know
we see what is not.
The light refracts.
Our eyes perceive
a shape so real,
a distant shore,
perhaps a ship
of monstrous size,
or structures at
the edge of – what?
A mountain floats
among the clouds.
Never mind,
a kite will tie all.
© William Bushell 2016
Ship and Wave
Winter Sun
Silhouette View
Finlayson Wash
Across the Strait
Juan de Fuca No.4
It arrives in your journey.
A set of stairs curving to a destination unseen.
They offer nothing.
Not a hint of what may be there.
Just a way to clamber.
At the water,
three stones.
Worn by weather, rock and wave.
Waiting.
Time has forgotten.
The gulls and the clouds remember.
Waiting.
The water washes as a mother with love and duty.
The sky and the rain pay homage.
Waiting.
The sea remembers all.
This was taken in early evening on November 30 2012 while on a walk.
To be by the water,
the air fresh and sharp with the sea.
The sky is alive and moving with intent.
I turned and saw the green of the waves
and the light revealing all…
image on image 
