Separate yet whole such sweetness to swallow bitter, absorbed
I watched you as you slept, touched hair, stroked eyelids and lulled in your shallow, heavy breaths

Conceding

I was quiet in a deafening flash, lackluster and bland I sat
your anger shown in thunderous words, demanding and infuriated you towered

The images of man and woman shattered, bombarding
the floor strewn with shards of sharp reflections, hard angles caught against harsh accusations

Alone in our turmoil, together in our strife
ever forward, ever present mini bumps lack meaning to certain charted courses

I remember warm, honey covered caresses in a soft television’s glow as your eyes hang in the darkness
slightly smiling, our limbs entwine as we see movie upon movie of other lives lived

If a heart be broken, be it soft as tears which slide down silent cheeks
if a heart be broken, be it kind as mother’s hushed whispers: Go to sleep, my dear child

Instead, I hear those terse, three syllables
“Whatever.”

When I began thinking about this lifestyle and relating it to this body of work as a whole, I was reminded of the Voltaire quote, “Tend to your own garden.” What would I consider “my garden” in the metaphorical or allegorical sense? If all I was connected to in the world was my little house, like the monks, what would comprise my garden for complete nourishment of my body and soul? I’ve spent most of my life alone, could I live alone? With all my life experience and all the people I have known, what would I most value to seed for my future?

Chartreuse was a perfect color with which to explore these questions from many angles. If one’s aura is this color, it means the person’s core exudes confidence, prosperity, travel and growth. These tenets are especially poignant for where I saw this piece developing. The more I researched and soaked in the essence of what I wanted to accomplish, the more I began understanding the significance of what I have been doing in this whole collection. As Joseph Campbell said in The Power of Myth interviews, “We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize your own depth. All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time – namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” It is not about being in the right place at the right time; life is about being and appreciating.

So, with this piece, I explored what it is to be homesick by creating in words those things I discovered I was missing. My garden became a partner, a warm shared space and children… a future rooted in work, tender care, patience and understanding. I am a blessed woman to be following my bliss; through these love poems, I am finding wholeness within and without.

Carefully picking, gently planting each small seed plucked from a foregone season’s harvest
infinite cycle continued again, we press soiled fingers into ever fertile earth

Germinating

Shoeless, dirt stained and pink shouldered, we toil, watering each sprout to flower then fruit
nurtured, blessed in sunlight, vines grow strength and roots bear weight

Neatly aligned rows crop up with tender care, a house well kept is a home well made
leaves cradle dewy berries, thick stalks drip bulbous edibles

Our nourishment from our own hands, we dine
seasons change, broken bread and crisp, snapped greens become sweet stews and cornmeal

Our garden becomes a nursery as we two beget a third, then fourth
the fantasies of children are plentiful, the hopes of parents redeem in swaddled clothes

I see your chin in the youngest and my brow in the elder
the future, made tangible, lives in their little eyes

I look upon my life spread before me, with you
“How much the richer for the seasoning!”

The term sublime is prevalent during The Romantic Age, and the concept is one of my most cherished influences. It refers to awestruck, events and vistas which inspire either fear for terror or fear for beauty. Having a sublime experience is to walk away with a feeling of a supreme sense of being, where one is immediately made small in the world while still carrying a personal purpose in existence within that comparison. When I think of sublime and try to explain it, I think of an annual bonfire party I would go to in college on an East Texas farm. Every spring, my friend cleared the brush on his family property to ready the grounds for planting season. He piled the brush in the middle of an open field. It would climb two stories tall before it was lit for the party. The heat and the fire would burn in the sky with such a furious intensity no one could get within ten feet of its base. But, it was that heat and furious intensity that made a person want to walk closer, want to become a part of it. Another example of sublime is the feeling one gets at the top of a precipice, the slight pull felt in the stomach to walk closer to the edge. It also explains why people with vertigo have the strange compulsion to skydive; it is about living in that sublime moment, if only for seconds.

The writing of the poem itself is meant to read as a Turner painting. I included the imagery of that time period as well as the language, like the use of eventide as opposed to the word evening. My interpretation of the sublime experience is found in the description of life itself, followed by being an active observer as an artist and trying to capture those moments… the expression of the long journey into night, as it were. In the romantic thread of all these pieces, the sublime aspect is reflected by having a partner to share in these experiences. I thought it especially gratifying to be able to end the piece with a reference to Turner’s attributed last words from his death bed, “The sun is God.”

It parts the smoky plumes of dawn and sparkles in dew drops, diffusion
a tapestry of warmth spreads at our feet, emulates from without and within

Heralding

Flowers climb vines, to bend their faces toward the light
full arrays, saturated palettes of gratitude giving nod

Overgrown, cobbled walkways uncoil from framed houses then join roads leaving Rome
to fall into carefully charted straits and narrows before embarking on ineffable feats

Gleaming ports dense with restless vessels make ready for maritime trade, masts
untimed metronomes, rock to the squeaky clanks of rigging against booms

We, on our journey, bare witness through words captured in picture or folded in phrase
united in homage through every step towards our own eventide

Sleepy sky, a gentle giant, closes his lids for another day drawn, harmonious
one with and one without, we are in balance between sky and sand

Languid thoughts float to slumber
“If the sun be not God…”

We were having one of our late night conversations, not too abnormal for us. J was writing a paper for a photojournalism class, had me read it which led to us discussing the relationship between an image and a story. He grew really animated in his critique of one photographer’s misuse of image. He told me how he would have made the shot for more impact to carry the commentary of the article. I began thinking how interesting it would be to work on a project together, a sort of dialogue we could share. J liked the idea, suggesting “color” as a theme. The rest is spoken through the book.

So, here I sit at Azure.  J chose the color blue as a starting point. With over 20 years of classical training and study of visual art, “blue” felt too plain to me. I decided on azure, the color of his eyes. I began thinking about J, began thinking about all we had been through and all we had ever said to one another. I began really exploring my feelings for him. After reading this piece, a buddy of mine responded to it by saying, “Gosh, I wish I could wake up next to a girl and she would see the Italian Riviera in my eyes.” It is a little of that, but then can be read as so much more.

I once read in some art history book about Sumerian figurines that ancient Mesopotamians would commission craftsman to make and place in temples. These little figurines were effigies in the likeness of their patrons. They were meant to represent attentive worshipfulness when the actual people were absent from the temple, constant marble votives ever piteous to their gods. The statuettes stuck in my mind all these years because the depiction of their big, round eyes. The rest of their features were in proportion, but the eyes. Their eyes swallowed a full third of their face. A professor once explained their belief in the eyes as being the window to the soul; they were bearing their soul to their deities.

“The eyes are the window to the soul,” as a phrase, gets thrown around a lot. Beyond just saying it, I believe it. J’s eyes are very watchful. Every once in a while he looks out into the distance as he talks about a future or some vision of a future; it is in those moments that his eyes take on the color of the sky and a naked horizon. I can always feel when his eyes have this look, even hearing it in his voice over the phone. The more I thought of J and what he means to me, the more I wanted to paint a verbal portrait of that look he gets, mimicking the sky cleared of clouds.

So, this poem is a love poem, a love poem written to someone else’s soul as seen in their eyes.

There are several things going on in this piece, starting with Blake then leading to ancient Egypt to The Bible to Yeats. But, the essence of the piece is to be found in the phrasing; first and foremost it is a psalm, a work of great praise. My mission was to carve out that flash of light from Blake, be true to alabaster as a stone and have a quality of timelessness.

Poets usually allude to alabaster as an adjective, like alabaster skin. The imagery is lovely, but no longer holds an original quality. Hence, I alluded to the essence of the stone. When I think about alabaster as a medium, I am drawn to my studies of Egypt and ancient religious practices. The ancient Egyptians had a curious belief system based around death. The modern tradition calls the Ancient Egyptian ideology a death cult. Beyond monuments that are now numbered in The Ancient Seven Wonders, they brought this idea of immortality to their daily lives and traditions. They believed that a person sustained immortality as long as the body could be preserved as a conduit for the soul in the afterlife, a touchstone as it were. To further this ends, a mummification process was developed for preservation. The process included the body along with the vital organs. For the vital organs, they were removed, place in jars often carved of alabaster, then sealed for eternity. These jars were called canopic jars. The allusion to the jars in the piece is to reiterate the fruitlessness of manufactured immortality.

Juxtaposed against the Egyptians, I was heavily influenced by The Bible. Psalm 137, verses 4-6, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.” The idea of the Egyptians believing in immortality and kings becoming gods versus the idea of the Israelites feeling godless in exile and associating it as death was a poignant parallel.

Lastly, as a love poem, this piece is a nod to my favorite poet. Yeats and his Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven is perfection. Love is embracing a destiny which fulfills dreams, creating new dreams.

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with gold and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats, 1899

Making a wish in my solitude, seeing your spirit in the cosmos
arching beyond and above intangible ether to chase the sun

Transcending

Gods and goddesses, canopic jars housing cold hearts to clutch immortality
in withered hands, cravings lost to lackluster frivolities of flesh later left to rot

I sing the Lord’s song, a broken harmony and awestruck compulsion
faith in cherished memories which romantically dance towards dusk to refresh for a new morn

Our satellites of night are suns of other days by distant planets, with life forms unknown
they are circled as a dream trapped in our imagination, a dream pushing ever closer to truth

My, how you shine through dreary dismal seasons, how I shine on
basking in my own stellar glow, unyieldingly we throw ourselves into the fray

Hand extended, healthy and pure, my song in crescendo I do weep with praise
for the juncture at each crossed path, where we meet in our destinies

In my mind I look upon you with eyes unblinking
“Tread softly…”

I chose to explore this concept from a strictly internal perspective, feeling that to be the truest way to express what the movement represents. Pan is the patron god of this poem, giving a nod to the precursors of Transcendentalism, The Romantics. Both movements often cited him since he was the deity of forests, fertility and spring, the essential aspects of all things natural. Two quotes, one from Henry David Thoreau (American Transcendentalist) and the other from Norman Maclean’s A River Runs through It, gave me the direction I needed when I sat down to write this piece. The first quote reads, “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” The second from Maclean’s book has always haunted me as the most lyrical of prose, “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs… I am haunted by waters.” I will acknowledge right now, these passages are heady stuff from which to draw inspiration.

The actual daydream is about two people finding their nature within each other. I have always believed that people bring out different things in one another. It is not a matter of whether one person is good or bad in a relationship; it is about what one person brings out in the other. The romantic notion that someone could make an individual want to be a better person has always seemed so silly and one sided to me. The ultimate quest is that of finding a companion, being better together through that union. The phrase “come closer” in the piece is in reference to the literal translation of the ancient and infamous Hindu text Kama Sutra. Regardless of whether the person is there physically, his or her connection to you is a constant and without the incidental constraints of time or space… continuity in an inconsistent world, comfort in knowing a particular person exists. He or she becomes the tree in the forest which, even if not heard, is always felt.

A tree in the forest can be felt for miles whence it falls, speaking what is beyond sound
I call your name through the ages, begging forgiveness for not being near

Daydreaming

Moist moss climbs northern bark, woven carpet of soft pine needles laid upon ground
I walk barefoot amongst the rustling shadows searching for your voice

I join you at a gurgling spring, we are entranced by its satin finish rolling over pebble and rock
carrying curled leaves through the current on to some unseen river, then ocean

Sprite, nymph, Pan with his pipe romp in distant days bygone, beckoning
us to join the celebration, arm in arm we merge as one with the hallowed wood

The day drops before night, flowing ever forward we drift towards The Morning Star
with arms spread open, embracing the wonderment of life well lived

The words come closer hang in the air as we leap from branch to branch
in naked bliss the journey is kind, enveloped by my proximity to you

An unanswered phone pulls me back to reality
“Sweetie, how are you?”