s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Tea Time, Stepping Stones
 M A Shaheed & Sandy Kinnee

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Stepping Stones, Perhaps, 2018, Acrylic Latex on Canvas, 7′ X 15′

Tea Time

I stare at my naked violin
that sits in the window sill,
waiting on the wind to play
it again.

The strings seem to anticipate the
arrival of a storm. That was the last
thing it may have remembered, when
I dropped the bow on the greasy
wooden floor.

It was trying catch the last note, as
it landed near a table’s crooked
leg, near the broken kitchen door.

Dark clouds gather, matter of
factually, exactly where I want
them.

Winds went someplace else this
time, and forsook the
violin.

I gather my rosin, bow and Stradivarius,
off I go back to the chamber, I thought I
escaped some time ago.

Poem by Proet M A Shaheed. Painting by Sandy Kinnee.

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M A Shaheed began writing in the seventh grade and continued after high school. First published in White Motors newspaper under the name of Clyde Shy. The column was called “The Poets Corner,” that he’d helped to establish. In 1963/64 living in Stockholm, Sweden, he wrote stories for  a photographer whose pictures were sold to newspapers & magazines.  M A  Shaheed became a professional musician, playing bass violin and played  with major Avant Garde musicians. Continued to write, but it wasn’t on the front burner. In 1966 joined poetry workshop called the Muntu Poets, headed by Russell Atkins, noted Avant Garde poet and composer along with well- known poet and playwrite Norman Jordan located in Cleveland, Ohio. At the end of that year “68”,  began to work on his spiritual development. M A  Shaheed stopped writing for 3 decades, but driven back to his pen by a clearer understanding of the real reality. Has since published 44 books, been in numerous anthologies. Working with a new publisher, with 3 more books on the way. The genre includes novellas, poetry, short stories, Flash Fiction. “My goal is to keep writing until I stop, until I can no longer hear.”

Sandy Kinnee had for the past five years been exclusively painting fifteen-foot canvases. Unfortunately, his lease to the cavernous studio ended just as Covid-19 struck. Fortunately, he has a more modest studio at home, where he is currently hunkered down; occasionally baking another loaf of sourdough while paint dries on repurposed disks of paper.  This studio is underground and as windowless as where the bigger paintings, such as the above Stepping Stones, Perhaps (18SSP_012) came into being.