My Logo

When the suburbanites moved into Walnut Creek and its walnut orchards in the 1950s, the once dry orchards with seasonal irrigation now became very well-watered lawns.The water table changed substantially and the walnut trees developed Crown Rot and died. One of my jobs as a teenager was to dig up and remove the walnut tree stumps in our front and back yards. By shovel and with a hand axe, chopping at the roots, little did we know of chainsaws in those days. Hence the tree stump in the logo. I also mowed lawns for many neighbors and hand-trimmed their lawns. WeedEaters had yet to be invented. Therefore grass always grows around the stump. Dad, Phil Bray was an artist among his many other talents and was forever drawing holes in things with small bugs flying out of them. He taught me how to do the same but I preferred paper airplanes. If you fold the plane’s wings just right, it will Loop-de-Loop for you and land perfectly.Years later, when I needed a logo, this was it.

My logo, freehand in ink. (Illustration by Peter Bray)

©Peter Bray 7/29/2018
All rights reserved

My Group of 32

In my second year there in The City in 1985, they were beginning their “downsizing,” but it wasn’t called that yet. I inherited a group of 32 graphic designers and production people. We were spread out in three locations in two different buildings. “Go meet your people, review their portfolios, and in 30 days we’ll move from the 14th floor to the 19th.” So said my boss, the Dept. Head at that time. 32 oak drawing boards, drafting machines, and waxers for doing conventional corporate communications all moved to the 19th floor. Add word processors, editors, typesetters, photographers, we were a small circus. Add the Macintosh Lisa shortly thereafter, and workstations replaced the oak furniture, etc. In time we were a self-sustaining Cost Center and down to 8 designers in 1994, we were proficient with FX’s and fast Mac Quadras and global, digital communications. A damn fine group of artists. Today even the building is owned by someone else.
©Peter Bray 7/29/2018
All rights reserved

Workhorse and Me

Workhorse coming in
from the back forty,
star thistles in his mane and tail,
freshly plowed dirt on his hooves,
blackbird poop on his back,
summer heat across his body,
crows’ noise in his ears,
latex stains on his shirt,
caulk stains on his pants,
sawdust in his cough,
check in his pocket,
and bills at the post office
to be paid from the metal pail
full of them that he keeps
around his neck.
The farmer can’t lay him off
because the farmer likes to eat.
©Peter Bray 7/29/2016
All rights reserved

The College of Engineering

The College of Engineering
never taught us
how to stack our poems,
we had to learn that
the empirical way:
Stack a few,
see how they withstand
wind forces, vibration,
corrosion, harmonic waves,
phase shifts, nautical expansion,
tidal action, couplet robbing,
ekphrastic observations.
Then the type –
All those font choices,
flush right? Left?
And the photos, logos,
signature sign-off
at the bottom –
Rights? What rights?
Who’s gonna steal this stuff?
Some toothless bear
in the woods? Mick Jagger?
Norman Rockwell?
Get real.
©Peter Bray 7/13/16
All rights reserved

Gift or Curse?

1. To some of us, our DNA is stamped at birth: “Poet” and it takes a lifetime to figure out whether it’s a Gift or a Curse.
2. Make any money from Sales? Oh, that’s a laugh riot!
3. Some of us climb rhymes and stack them like bricks without mortar.
4. Even hoarders know excess poems or books of poems can be a fire hazard.
5. Some of us write poems about our poems:

Book 4

Books 2 and 3
never saw the light of day.
They went into the trash
and the trashman took them away.
They were poems destined
for a one-time show,
written on the backs of business cards
and shopping bags and stuffed
into pockets and then boxes
until finally they fell
to the clipping room floor.
Perhaps they’re finally free.
This is Book 4.
©Peter Bray 1982 & 7/29/2018
All rights reserved

Peter Bray lives, works, and writes in Benicia
and has written this column since 2008.

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