Timothy's Song

Timothy Stephens was a painter...

I lived in a cabin that I built on his property in Bolinas, Ca. for most of a five year period during the mid seventies. Together we struggled through times of bad breaks, worked crappy jobs for short pay, & had some of the finest of hard times. I painted more than one picture at his urging - inspired by his example.

Tim & I would often hustle & scrimp together enough money to drive his truck down the coast to the border, at Tijuana. There we would park, & then venture into Baja, Mexico by bus for ill advised, but somehow survived adventures.

Tim was a very fine painter. He once painted a picture of his former wife from the neck to the thighs, as she was nine months pregnant. The body was a strange luminescent green, with details that at first seemed oddly convoluted. But then, on closer examination, the fetus inside was revealed, with the umbilicus, and looking deeper the heart & internal organs of mother and fetus, until, on deep concentration, one could see through to the mother's spine. Stepping back from the painting, the images again merged into the form of the mothers swollen, nude belly.

Tim was troubled by his ongoing battle with his former wife for continuing visitation rights with his two sons. During this period, in 1978, he was arrested on drug related charges. While the matter was pending, one sunny day he went into San Francisco, thirty miles to the south of us, and leapt from the Golden Gate Bridge. He was thirty Years of age, at the time of his death. I miss him to this day.

......Timothy's Song

((C) 1979, Steven M Nelson)

Brush that caresses the canvas

Colors stream

The eye commands the hand

To show the unseen

The easel stands in a cellar

there it remains

visions of heaven & hell

Just so many stains

Timothy, your eyes could see

your vision was so clear to me

Painter in the dark

I heard the beating of your heart

Tell me why the world turns creation into chaos?

Tell me why we crucify the ones who come to save us?

Tell me why your colors

have to stand upon an easel in the dark?

Though the paining is vaunted

still the painter is haunted

his palette has gone to gray

No longer inspired

now the brush is retired

and the pigments are put away

Wipe the tears from my eyes so that I may see

the resplendence of his colors and symmetry

Paint in light now on your odyssey

Be at peace, Timothy...