Water :: Earth :: Wind :: Fire
Art and Art Education with the Elements
We start from a dark place before we are born,
reach for the ambiguous lightness
beyond
as if we could see through the window
into lighter places,
through a cloudy film.
It’s always there in winter, for some.
A tiny glass basket pulls me back to
childhood: its’ candy colors, stacks of rings
like playground sing-songs
memories carried as a burden or
a teaching
carried in starts and stops
like drops of water
or shards of crystal glass.
I drink it up.
— Maureen Shaughnessy
I did not sleep last night
before dawn I watched
the changing light
through bedroom curtains.
From a cold dark gray,
the soft folds of cloth grow
lighter
and lighter while
my heart
burns
out.
I stare at a single point
of gold
it’s the size of a pencil eraser
in a field of gray and beige
most likely a porch light across
the busy street.
The tiny light is the only spot
of warmth.
It draws me
yet I cannot gather the
mental energy to do anything
other than just stare
blank-minded.
The tiny light
disappears.
Most likely the day has arrived.
Luke sleeps and leaps
in his sleep. In his dreams he
can fly, spinning feathers through the air
legs out front the way a hero flies.Luke sleeps and chases
in his sleep. In his dreams he
snaps at fish that tease and leap and
fly in moonlight, and arc over our bow.Luke sleeps and watches
in his sleep, in his dreams he
sees a spirit ship floating the crest of a wave
it has come to take him home
I recently finished “Luke’s Dream.” My sister, Kat and her husband, Jerry, commissioned me to make a mixed media painting to remind them of their sweet rottweiler, Luke, and their sailing life. It was lovely to deliver it to my sister in person and to see her reaction to it.
The 48 inch by 30 inch piece is in a mahogany box (made by Tim) and covered with glass (thus the weird horizontal lines reflection of the siding on my mom’s house in the top photo.) I included an old barometer, compass, cleats, and bits of sailboats, maps, cables, sails, a sacrificial-zinc disc. Scribbles and smudges of charcoal, conte and pastel. Layered papers and drawings. Photos of peeling cracked wallpaper blended with an antique planosphere (map of the heavens) and of course, Luke himself sitting on the bow of the Splendid Mane.
Luke developed bone cancer in his leg, and died a few years ago. Fly free, Luke. Sweet dreams! Catch lots of rabbits and flying fish, won’t you?
My friend and writer/poet/blogger/nature-lover/people-lover-especially-grandchildren-lover, Joyce Ellen Davis, has recently published her (at least) 3rd book of poetry, A Book of Fours.
It’s an honor, Joyce, to have my collage with your poetry. Thank you.
even though i didn’t write this poem, it conveys what i feel in my heart:
there are times in life when one does the right thing
the thing one will not regret,
when the child wakes crying “mama,” late
as you are about to close your book and sleep
and she will not be comforted back to her crib,
she points you out of her room, into yours,
you tell her, “I was just reading here in bed,”
she says, “read a book,” you explain it’s not a children’s book
but you sit with her anyway, she lays her head on your breast,
one-handed, you hold your small book, silently read,
resting it on the bed to turn pages
and she, thumb in mouth, closes her eyes, drifts,
not asleep — when you look down at her, her lids open,
and once you try to carry her back
but she cries, so you return to your bed again and book,
and the way a warmer air will replace a cooler with a slight
shift of wind, or swimming, entering a mild current, you
enter this pleasure, the quiet book, your daughter in your lap,
an articulate person now, able to converse, yet still
her cry is for you, her comfort in you,
it is your breast she lays her head upon,
you are lovers, asking nothing but this bodily presence.
She hovers between sleep, you read your book,
you give yourself this hour, sweet and quiet beyond flowers
beyond lilies of the valley and lilacs even, the smell of her breath,
the warm damp between her head and your breast. Past midnight
she blinks her eyes, wiggles toward a familiar position,
utters one word, “sleeping.” You carry her swiftly into her crib,
cover her, close the door halfway, and it is this sense of rightness,
that something has been healed, something
you will never know, will never have to know.
— by Ellen Bass, 1985 from Our Stunning Harvest
