Nothing But Gifts

You talked but after your talking all the rest remains. After your talking—poets, philosophers, contrivers of romances—everything else, All the rest deduced inside the flesh Which lives & knows not just what is permitted. I am a woman held fast now in a great silence. Not all creatures have your need for words. Birds you […]

Meeting Without Surprise

Anterooms Out of the snowdrift Which covered it, this pillared Sundial starts to lift, Able now at last To let its frozen hours Melt into the past In bright, ticking drops. Time so often hastens by, Time so often stops— Still, it strains belief How an instant can dilate, Or long years be brief. Dreams, […]

Wintering

Wise beyond her years, my friend Nicole wrote these words to me today: Loving people is impossible. We shine our weakly powered headlamps into the jungles of each other and the light never seems to penetrate to the heart as we desire. It just can not get there. I suppose that’s the wisdom of praying […]

Chunking Color

John Tallman’s engaging blog, Color Chunks, has been posting examples of color from every possible setting sent to him by other artists. The range is part of the fun, from an array of tarps on a rooftop to an expanse of landscape. Today he posted three images of mine—one from the Australian Outback, from my […]

Cosmic Swat

God’s Acrostic What if the universe is God’s acrostic? He’s sneaking bits of proverbs into seismic variations; Abbreviating psalms in flecks of snow. Try to read them, says a comet, If you dare. Fine print. What you’ve been waiting for. Twisted in the DNA of marmosets: Hermetic feedback to your tight-lipped prayer. Examine indentations left […]

This Plague of Paint

View of my studio, looking north Friend and artist Pam Farrell has invited artists to do a show and tell on her blog. Calling her project Interactive Studio Blog Post–ISBP–Pam now has nearly 10 artists who have participated. Their postings typically feature a work or body of work and an image of their studio. Pam […]

The Single Body Alone in the Universe

Still image from the film Pillow Book Sex Without Love How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, Gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other’s bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth, whose mothers are going […]

Stitched Together Woman

The Feejee Mermaid August, 1842. She never lived separated. Orangutan torso and fish tail cut in half and sewn together to make one. The crowd saw only the ghosts of her pendulous breasts; they dried in the terrible manner of flesh. For long hair, a baboon head became necessary. The singular perfection of craft rendered […]