In the painting no one did,
we don’t see the Beaver Moon,
but it is there, full and shining
on the other side of the earth.
What we do see, as if from a bird’s
eye view: the hands of three
generations of women hovering
above a square wood table.
They hold bright puzzle pieces,
and beneath their fingers, a vibrant garden
has begun to emerge.
What we don’t see is the light
and gauzy conversation—the kind
that swoops, swallow-like, through
the field of the moment, the kind
that swerves and lifts, suggesting a space
unconstrained by straight edges.
In the painting no one did, the garden
is always blooming, the hands never age,
nothing sad ever happens,
the candles on the cake, also not pictured,
are never blown out, the banter
never ends, and like the unseen moon,
the love is there, reflecting, radiant,
shining beyond the frame.
Posts Tagged ‘painting’
Still Life on My Mother’s Birthday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, happiness, moment, moon, painting, puzzle, time on November 15, 2024| 9 Comments »
Learning from the Painting on My Kitchen Wall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, painting, rob schultheis on June 2, 2024| 2 Comments »
with thanks to Rob Schultheis
She is beautiful, the woman
on the wall with one long braid
and an owlet perched on her hand.
Not beautiful the way young girls dream,
but beautiful in the way old women dream.
which is to say she is deeply seen.
Sometimes I swear she watches me
as I slice the shiitake, as I chop the kale.
Her eyes are serious and always keen.
Her gaze makes me beautiful, too,
beautiful the way a morning is beautiful—
because it arrives every day as if
night cannot contain it; beautiful
the way the sun is beautiful, because
it needs no praise to share all its light.
In Art Class Making Aspen Trees
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, aspen, fixing, healing, painting on February 10, 2024| 12 Comments »
for Kellie Day
Everything is fixable,
said Kellie, as she
sprayed her painting
with water, then
held the canvas
on its side until
white paint streaked
across her forest, and
for six hours I lived
in that fixable world
of paint and paper
and brushes and
stencils, a world
of improvisation
and play, a world
where I wandered
in pale green and
deep blue, where
I trusted a glade
of my own making,
rested in that shade
where there were
no problems, just
new invitations to
reimagine what
might happen next,
and smudges became
birds, and tears became
trees, and my sorrow
became an aspen
grove where nothing
was fixed, but for six
sacred hours there
was nothing the
light couldn’t touch.
Dear Gustav Klimt,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, klimt, painting, portrait, sense of self on November 18, 2023| 12 Comments »
Please, don’t paint me today.
Maybe sketch me in pencil,
arms dangling soft by my sides.
Perhaps another day
I will gaze at the world
straight on, chin up,
eyes full of challenge
lips curled in risk.
Perhaps another day
I’ll stand with defiance,
long hair tossed back,
hands on my hips.
But today, dear man,
keep the eraser close.
I’m more paper than gesture.
more blank than bold stroke.
Today I have no mask,
no message, no need
to be seen. In fact,
Gustav, close your eyes.
Let me ask you about
when you met Typhon
and the Gorgons
and how things changed
from snakes to angel choirs
from skulls to golden kisses.
Here, good man.
Show me your face.
Please, hand me the pencil.
There Are Many Ways to Hold Space
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cinema, grave, grief, holding, painting, self-forgiveness on June 19, 2022| 10 Comments »
This morning I painted
a wooden marker for your grave—
a slender plank to hold the space
until the stone arrives.
I wanted it to be perfect,
but I am not a painter.
I am a mother painting
a wooden marker
for the grave of her son,
but there is devotion
in the uneven blue coat,
devotion in the crooked silver lettering,
devotion in every brush stroke of white.
In the movie of me,
I watched as the lens zoomed in
on my awkward hands
to show their slow and loyal work.
Then the frame widened
to include the quiet rooms in the house,
widened more to comprise the summer field,
then panned and tilted to the sky
to show the gathering rain.
After the fade to gray,
I was still here, sitting at the table,
paint on my dress,
my life not a movie but my life—
every day the chance to live into it.
I flashed back to sitting
at this same table
where you learned to write your letters,
then learned to write your name.
Fast forwarded through thousands
of family dinners.
Flashed to this morning
as I finished the grave marker,
shaping the letters of your name through tears.
Though a camera couldn’t show it,
I forgave myself
for not being a better painter.
I told myself I did the best I could.
It was hours before the rain began to fall.
All This Worry About How to Paint the Light
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black, dark, night, painting, poem, poetry on November 2, 2018| 4 Comments »
in part a response to Ferlinghetti’s “Instructions to Painters and Poets”
Teach me to paint the dark, the infinite
shades of the infinite dark, the basis of all
the light that is, the origin, the ink bright spark
that leaps from the great black well,
the darkling spring, the raven luck, the mother
from which the big bang sprang, the womb
of dawn, the only cloak measureless enough
to hold everything, everything in its folds.
Teach me to paint the inner midnight,
the moonless rooms, the lavish corners,
the mighty dark inside the fist, the vastness
of limitless space that links
with no effort the everything that is,
the everything that ever was, the everything
that will ever be. Teach me the song of soil,
the song of deep winter, the pure dark song
of the sea. All the dark that’s been terrorized
by light, and all the dark that’s been pushed away
and all the dark that’s been feared,
teach me its valor, its ferocity, its kindness,
its gentleness, its blinding generosity.
Wild Rose Learns to Paint
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alter ego, Art, bliss, painting, poem, poetry on February 24, 2015| 2 Comments »
She starts with marigold.
She pours the paint into a cup and selects the fattest brush.
The paint drips all over the floor as she moves toward the canvas.
She doesn’t care about the mess.
She drags huge pulls of marigold onto the blank, stroke after stroke after stroke.
There is no pattern, no purpose, no why.
More paint, she says to no one, more paint!
And she opens the ochre, the navy, the pomegranate, the plum.
She forgets about cups and pours the paint
directly into her hands. Then it’s hurl of paint, smash of paint,
fist and smear and splat of paint. Long slow pinky fingered tease of paint.
Puddles of paint. Great rainbowed pools.
She rolls in the paint and then rolls her body against the walls, the doors,
every inch of the virgin floor.
Every part of her is color now, and there is nothing
she’s not ready to touch.
I’m Trying to Learn, Walt Whitman
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged duality, heron, Meredith Nemerov, miracle, painting, tanka sequence, Walt Whitman on October 29, 2011| 1 Comment »
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle.
—Walt Whitman
Balanced against morning frost
I do not see
the great blue heron
wading in the river
so I put it there
*
Meredith mentions
a student who insists
on painting
into the foreground
a rock
*
“All she needs is a darker color,”
Meredith says, “and a value
like a triangle
and the canvas
would be full of light”
*
You do not have
to be talented—even
my three year old girl
knows how to paint
something that makes her smile
*
It is not a painting,
this life, still
there was a heron here not
long ago, standing in frost
it was so beautiful
*
Here and not here,
light and dark,
so many years spent
debating the two—this morning
I see it, the river chimed in frost