Sauntering at Carver Roehl

John Muir didn't like the word "hike," and instead preferred the word "saunter."  I suppose sauntering sounds more pleasant than hiking, less like exercise and more like an easy appreciation of nature.  My husband and I sauntered through a local county park this afternoon, and while the colors so far are not brilliant, there is a real feeling of autumn in the air, as there should be on the first day of October.  I took several photos, but I think this one captures the feeling of the place best.  The landscape at Carver Roehl park is varied, some flat, some hilly, and there is a little creek that has carved out limestone outcroppings that are scattered with ferns. 

We didn't realize it, but a local friends group was sponsoring a fall gala, with speakers, picnicking, a petting zoo, and horse-drawn hayrides.  It was charming sauntering the trails, and hearing the sound of the horses' hooves on the road.

Sometimes the only cure for brain fog is a walk in the woods.  I'm glad we went.

October
by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being begiled.
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all.
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost ---
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Wild Flower Friends

Last week I took a quick drive north or Kewaunee and Door counties to see my dear aunt and my sister-in-law.  I had an urge to see visit them both, see Lake Michigan, and get some more smoked fish before fall.  My sister-in-law has lots of naturalized gardens filled with mostly native plants, and these photos are from her flower beds. The trip was good for my soul in all sorts of ways, and I think they were relieved to see me looking well.

I also have had a number of friends gifting me with all sorts of things - scarves to cover my bald head, nice hand written notes, vintage pottery, and sometimes old books they think I might like to include in my art.  One woman friend gifted me a small volume of poems published in 1931 that had belonged to her mother, and this poem was in that book.  The style is not modern, with all the lines capitalized and a regular rhyme scheme, but I liked the sentiment and appreciated the gift.

Wild Flower Friends
by Emma Peirce


One of our rarest joys
   When we country roads explore,
Is to welcome wild flower friends
   Of the seasons gone before.

They come crowding all about us
   As if with welcome too;
They give high lights of color
   To every distant view.

They are clambering up hillsides,
   They are massed in meadows sweet,
They are roaming through the woodlands,
   They are right here at our feet.

So true they are and loyal,
   We can always count the day
When we will find them ready
   To greet us on our way.

Some are shy, in hiding,
   For those we have to seek:
But we're sure to find them waiting; --
   We know the very week!

So individual are they,
   For all occasions meet:
Though different in myriad ways,
   They all are passing sweet.

They are marvels of shape and contour,
   Through the gamut of color they run;
Oh! They are wonderful pals of ours,
   These children of the sun!

While radiating beauty,
   They are serving their own ends:
But they make us more than grateful
   For those hosts of flower friends.

Japanese Serenity

Recently I took the short drive over to Janesville's Rotary Botanical Gardens. I like visiting early in the season before there are many visitors.  It's quiet then, and I like to sit in the Japanese garden and simply listen to the birds.  The beautiful thing about this part of the garden is that it doesn't depend on much by way of flowers, although some azaleas were in bloom.  Water, rocks, moss, and some neutral colored pots and sculptures makes this part of the garden peaceful.

Peaceful is good.

It's all I have to bring today --
This, and my heart beside--
This, and my heart, and all the fields--
And all the meadows wide--
Be sure you count--should I forget
Some one the sum could tell--
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the clover dwell.

                              Emily Dickinson

A Month of Orange: Wisconsin Hillsides

This is another photo from our weekend jaunt along the Mississippi River, and the driftless areas of western Wisconsin.  What is there to say that isn't already clear here?  We live in a state blessed with low key beauty which seems to peak on warm sunny days in October.  It is then that our trees, every bit as pretty as those in places like New England, change daily in shades of gold, russet, and flaming red, set off by fields alternating green and gold.

It's hard to see scenes like this, spotted from a wayside park on a county road, unless a person decides to abandon the four lane highways, and slow down.  Of course we have the luxury of being retired, and no longer in much of a hurry.

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – - -roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – - – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

- Mary Oliver

A Month of Orange: Impatiens

Now that it is flannel shirt weather, the impatiens that drooped during hot weather have perked up.  They'll look good until they get zapped by a hard frost.  The older I get the more difficult it is for me to maintain long beds of flowers, so I've taken taken to scattering around large plastic pots of the shade loving flowers in my garden.  An added benefit is that if frost is forecast early in the fall, I can drag the pot into the garage over night and keep the color going a little longer.

Sometimes less is more.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Challenging Myself - A Month of Orange

I decided that I need a distraction from distressing national and local news stories, worries about a sick beloved kitty, guilt over neglecting exercise and not doing artwork.  So it occurred to me to take on a little challenge, something positive. 

The colors in our yard are gradually changing, and I began putting a few autumn decorations out, and many of them feature some shade of chrome yellow, or orange.  I will keep an eye open for those colors, photograph them, and share them here.  Maybe I can find some good quotes or poems to go along.

This photo is of a black eyed Susan vine.  It's an annual, planted to replace the honeysuckle vine that finally reached the end of its days.  For weeks I thought the seeds were duds, didn't sprout, but then a couple weeks ago I checked the trellis on the south side of the house and there they were.  ll that was needed was patience.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Gold

Riverside Park, Janesville, Wisconsin, 2014

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Drippy Preview of Autumn, and a Poem

Mural in the Lower Courthouse Park, by professional chalk artist, Lee Jones

The image is of the Rock Aqua Jays water ski team members

It's September, and the back yard garden has seen better days.  Everything that intended to bloom already has, and our recent dry weather has encouraged the maples to start dropping leaves in the yard and on the deck.  The squirrels are feeling it too, making a first class mess building a nest in the tree that has our deck built around it.  We encouraged them to move.

Kids are back in school.  Football is back on the television.  The farmers market is overflowing with cherry tomatoes and other fall bounty.  And Janesville's ill-fated Art Infusion has ended the drought once more.  While the weather was ideal yesterday, today gray skies and steady rain made it necessary for Lee Jones to work under a tent to finish her work, and for the handful non-professional artists to tape plastic over their creations in order for them not to not be washed away.
 

The event started in 2011 with a $10,000 grant from the state tourism bureau to the Janesville Area Convention and Visitor's Bureau. The convention folks' stated goal was to bring 5,000 new people downtown to listen to  musicians, watch chalk artists of all ages at work , and a be delighted by a flashmob (remember those?). They hoped to infuse the local economy with an extra $250,000.  The group hired the talented and amiable Wisconsin native Lee Jones to teach chalk painting workshops to the general public and to school children, and to create a large work downtown.  They bought boxes of chalk, hired billboards, wrote press releases, and did radio interviews,  then hoped for the best.  But bad weather - and probably other circumstances - conspired to make participation less and less each year.  The first year had two days of unrelenting rain, the second unseasonably cold weather, and this year much-needed rain one of the two days.  And each year fewer and fewer participants.  I walked downtown today and peeked at Jones' chalk art, and saw only five others, total. None of the sweet young children's artwork I remembered from last year.  No music.  No flash mob.

I am in no position to judge why this happened.  Bad luck?  A misguided effort to concentrate publicity in Illinois and Wisconsin counties other than Rock?  I wonder how many Beloit folks or people from Walworth county would really come to Janesville and then stay over night for an activity like this one.  Requiring a $10 fee to participate?  Parents of local children who paid the fee last year and still had the boxes of chalk from 2012 may not have felt like shelling out another $10 for this year.  Lack of involvement by the local arts community?  Were the Janesville Art League, individual artists, or groups like the Rock Valley Woodcarvers, who had a show the same weekend, involved?  Perhaps this just isn't a community that appreciates sidewalk art. I don't know.

Looking at the small number of entries for the $250 first prize this year, part of me thought I should have given it a go, but I am not sure the prize (if I were able to snag it) would cover the pain-relievers I'd need for my knees and hands if I did. 

 Amateur entry in chalk painting contest - the only one not covered with plastic this afternoon

Mushrooms, by Mary Oliver

Rain and then

the cool pursed

lips of the wind

draw them

out of the ground --

red and yellow skulls

pummelig upward 

through leaves, 

through grasses, through sand; astonishing

in their suddensess,

their quietude,

their wetness, they appear

on fall mornings, some

balancing in the earth

on one hoof

packed with poison,

others billowing

chunkily, and deicious --

those who know

walk out to gather, choosing

the benign from flocks

of glitterers, sorcerers,

sussulas,

panther caps,

chark-white death angels

in their torn veils

looking innocent as sugar

but full of paralysis:

to eat

is to stagger down

fast as the mushrooms themselves

when they are done being perfect

and overnight

slide back under the shining

fields of rain.

Gothic Gazing

Spring has finally arrived, and I've been doing more outdoorsy things, killing dandelions, fixing up the deck, visiting the cemeteries for a bit of grass trimming and setting of flowers and flags before Memorial Day.  But a couple days of rain sent me back up to the studio for some painting.

Last summer my patient spouse and I took a visiting out-of-state niece to Chicago for a visit to one of my favorite places, the Chicago Art Institute.  I've been there often enough to be acquainted with much of their permanent collection, and I have real affection for their twentieth century paintings.  We made a stop at Grant Wood's iconic painting of his sister and his Iowa dentist, American Gothic.  As familiar as it is, I'm always interested in stopping to look at the details, the tendril of hair escaping the woman's bun, the plants on the porch of the house.

Has any American painting been reproduced or parodied as often as American Gothic?  For years when I was teaching I used a coffee cup from the Art Institute - doing duty these days as a pen holder.

Has any American painting been parodied as often? A quick Google search will turn up dozens, from Paul Newman and his wife as the famous pair, to Granny and Jed Clampett.  This Pinterest page is full of good ones.

The painting has inspired poetry, too.  I like this one by John Stone:

AMERICAN GOTHIC

Just outside the frame
there has to be a dog
chickens, cows and hay

and a smokehouse
where a ham in hickory
is also being preserved

Here for all time
the borders of the Gothic window
anticipate the ribs

of the house
the tines of the pitchfork
repeat the triumph

of his overalls
and front and center
the long faces, the sober lips

above the upright spines
of this couple
arrested in the name of art

These two
by now
the sun this high

ought to be
in mortal time
about their businesses

Instead they linger here
within the patient fabric
of the lives they wove

he asking the artist silently
how much longer
and worrying about the crops

she no less concerned about the crops
but more to the point just now
whether she remembered

to turn off the stove.

Anyway, I enjoyed my husband's niece's reaction to the painting, and moments later a pair of black clad young men can up, museum guides in hand, to get a closer look.  I snapped a quick photo of them, and then this week I finally painted it.  My painting is oil on paper, and quite small, only five by seven inches.  That meant I had to simplify things.  I eliminated the little "keep-your-distance" fence the museum puts there to keep people from getting too close.  The man on the right had his legs tattooed, but I didn't want lots of detail in that part of the picture.  And of course the Grant Wood painting is very simplified; it had to be.  It's about the size of a postage stamp. 

But I think my area of real interest is in the young men, in their obvious interest and close gaze.  I think the fact that these urban  dudes are so interested in an old painting of serious-looking Iowa farmers speaking to the durable appeal of the painting.

New Collage, a Poem

3x4 inches, collage with vintage paper, altered papers

Sleeping in the Forest  

Mary Oliver 

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

Girlfriends

5x7 inches, acrylic on paper

It has been such a hot summer, I find myself combing through old photos of people sunbathing, swimming, in boats, and fishing.  I certainly haven't been doing these things.  These two girls were high school friends of my mother's, and I decided to try to depict them.  This was supposed to be the under painting, with color added later, but I think I'll leave them as they are for now.  Or maybe I'll try another version in color later.  I suppose there's no reason to rush a decision.  In the original photograph, which is small, in black and white, they sit in front of dark foliage, so that their hair blends into the background.  I decided to eliminate the trees and just emphasize the young women.  Somehow they speak to me of pleasant summer days spent with friends.

Happiness
by Joyce Sutphen

This was when my daughters were just children
playing on the rocky shore of the lake,

their hair in braids, their bright-colored jackets
tied around their waists. It was afternoon,

the shadows falling away, their faces
glowing with light. Whatever we said then

(and it must have been happy; it must have
been hopeful) is lost as I am now lost

from that life I lived. This was when nothing
that I wanted mattered, though all I wanted

was happiness, pure happiness, simple
as strawberries and cream in a saucer,

as curtains floating from a window sill,
as small pairs of shoes arranged in a row.

Canoe

old snapshot, found in a file drawer at a consignment shop today

Green Canoe, by Jeffrey Harrison

I don't often get the chance any longer
to go out alone in the green canoe
and, lying in the bottom of the boat,
just drift where the breeze takes me,
down to the other end of the lake
or into some cove without my knowing
because I can't see anything over
the gunwales but sky as I lie there,
feeling the ribs of the boat as my own,
this floating pod with a body inside it...

also a mind, that drifts among clouds
and the sounds that carry over water—
a flutter of birdsong, a screen door
slamming shut-as well as the usual stuff
that clutters it, but slowed down, opened up,
like the fluff of milkweed tugged
from its husk and floating over the lake,
to be mistaken for mayflies at dusk
by feeding trout, or be carried away
to a place where the seeds might sprout.

Smokin'!

It's really really hot this week in southern Wisconsin.  Today it hit 100 degrees in Janesville, and it was not dry heat.  There's a burning ban in effect in most of the state, and lots of Independence Day fireworks displays have been delayed or canceled.  Not here though - I guess shooting pyrotechnics out over the Rock River is safe enough.

I'm not sure if the ban extends to outdoor grilling; I don't think folks would stand for that.  The heat got me thinking about this 1956 snapshot of Grandpa Tess, dressed up in his Fathers Day apron and cap, cooking burgers on a very low-tech grill. Genius at Work is what the get-up says.  I remember that they set up picnic tables in the garage, and we all settled in for burgers, chips, potato salad, and Cokes.

In the background our old green car is there, heating up in the sun. Nobody had air conditioning, and cars certainly did not have any way to cool down except by rolling down all the windows - by hand.  It made for some steamy vacations.

Immigrant Picnic
By Gregory Djanikian

It's the Fourth of July, the flags
are painting the town,
the plastic forks and knives
are laid out like a parade.

And I'm grilling, I've got my apron,
I've got potato salad, macaroni, relish,
I've got a hat shaped  
like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what's his pleasure
and he says, "Hot dog, medium rare,"
and then, "Hamburger, sure,  
what's the big difference,"  
as if he's really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs,  
slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,
uncap the condiments. The paper napkins  
are fluttering away like lost messages.

"You're running around," my mother says,  
"like a chicken with its head loose."

"Ma," I say, "you mean cut off,
loose and cut off   being as far apart  
as, say, son and daughter."

She gives me a quizzical look as though  
I've been caught in some impropriety.
"I love you and your sister just the same," she says,
"Sure," my grandmother pipes in,
"you're both our children, so why worry?"

That's not the point I begin telling them,
and I'm comparing words to fish now,  
like the ones in the sea at Port Said,  
or like birds among the date palms by the Nile,
unrepentantly elusive, wild.  

"Sonia," my father says to my mother,
"what the hell is he talking about?"
"He's on a ball," my mother says.
                                                     
"That's roll!" I say, throwing up my hands,
"as in hot dog, hamburger, dinner roll...."

"And what about roll out the barrels?" my mother asks,
and my father claps his hands, "Why sure," he says,
"let's have some fun," and launches  
into a polka, twirling my mother  
around and around like the happiest top,  

and my uncle is shaking his head, saying
"You could grow nuts listening to us,"  

and I'm thinking of pistachios in the Sinai
burgeoning without end,  
pecans in the South, the jumbled
flavor of them suddenly in my mouth,
wordless, confusing,
crowding out everything else.

Musing

A Studio Muse

2.5x3.5 mixed media collage

I've been putting together a short presentation for a local painting group about the 2012 WRAA Tiny Treasures Fundraiser, and to that end making a collection of ATC sized pieces to show the group.  Yesterday I wanted to assemble a couple little collages in the required 2.5x3.5 inch format, and was inspired by a ceramic pin I had inherited from my late friend, artist and teacher, Katherine Belling.  I always admired the little mask-like face, though I seldom wear the pin for fear of breaking it.  The Bellings  had vacationed in Mexico with us years ago, and I remember her breaking one of the matching earrings when it slipped to the floor.  Anyway, I used the pin as the basis for the face of this little collage, and I dug into my stash of salvaged papers, and Mom's old button tin, to finish it off.  Kathy was an inspiration to me when she was here, and after her death I was spurred on to go back to making art, so I suppose that makes her my muse. Muses were Greek goddesses who were imagined to inspire artists, poets and scientists, and later sometimes some women were described as muses when they served to inspired artists.  I seem to remember that there was a 1999 comedy featuring Albert Brooks, who courted his modern Muse in the form of Sharon Stone. 

I believe inspiration comes from many places.  For me, seeing other people's art always spurs my own ideas, and ideas from just playing around with materials.  When in doubt, I move my hands.  I doodle.  I try an online challenge.  I dip into my stash of old diaries and other vintage paper, book and magazine pages, personal photos, and assorted junk.  I play music - heck, I just play.  

After looking for a poem to comment on the topic of a muse, I found this excerpt from Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism, lines I hadn't thought of in a while, though perhaps I should have:

A little learning is a dang'rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,

While from the bounded level of our mind,

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise

New, distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try,

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But those attain'd, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,

Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

I'll keep in mind my lack of deep knowledge, when I give my talk to the art class this week.

New JKPP Portrait and a Poem

 "Kline, Brushing His Teeth"

6x9 inches, watercolor, for Julia Kay's Portrait Party

Every Thursday morning I drive to Milton and join a group of artists at the Gathering Place.  I always bring something I've painted during the week to show, and something small to work on, since I dislike hauling big projects out of the house.  I worked on drawing from my community figure drawing group a once or twice, but discovered that it made a couple of the Milton folks distinctly uncomfortable, so no more un-draped models there.  I've taken to preparing a drawing of a portrait for Julia Kay's Portrait Party, then painting it with the Gathering Place group; this was the one I finished yesterday. 

It has been a while since I posted a poem, so I went searching for one that had a toothbrush in it.  I found several, and oddly enough each one had something about a love affair in it.  Here's what I eventually decided to include here:

Vandergast and the Girl
By Louis Simpson

Vandergast to his neighbors—
the grinding of a garage door
and hiss of gravel in the driveway.

He worked for the insurance company  
whose talisman is a phoenix
rising in flames ... non omnis moriar.
From his desk he had a view of the street—

translucent raincoats, and umbrellas,  
fluorescent plate-glass windows.  
A girl knelt down, arranging
underwear on a female dummy—

sea waves and, on the gale,  
Venus, these busy days,
poised in her garter belt and stockings.

         *

The next day he saw her eating
in the restaurant where he usually ate.

Soon they were having lunch together  
elsewhere.
                She came from Dallas.
This was only a start, she was ambitious,  
twenty-five and still unmarried.
Green eyes with silver spiricles ...
red hair ...
                  When he held the car door open  
her legs were smooth and slender.

“I was wondering,”
she said, “when you'd get round to it,”  
and laughed.

         *

Vandergast says he never intended  
having an affair.
                           And was that what this was?  
The names that people give to things ...
What do definitions and divorce-court proceedings  
have to do with the breathless reality?

O little lamp at the bedside
with views of Venice and the Bay of Naples,  
you understood! Lactona toothbrush
and suitcase bought in a hurry,
you were the witnesses of the love
we made in bed together.

Schrafft's Chocolate Cherries, surely you remember  
when she said she'd be true forever,

and, watching “Dark Storm,” we decided  
there is something to be said, after all,
for soap opera, “if it makes people happy.”

         *

The Vandergasts are having some trouble  
finding a buyer for their house.

When I go for a walk with Tippy  
I pass the unweeded tennis court,
the empty garage, windows heavily shuttered.

Mrs. Vandergast took the children  
and went back to her family.

And Vandergast moved to New Jersey,  
where he works for an insurance company  
whose emblem is the Rock of Gibraltar—
the rest of his life laid out
with the child-support and alimony payments.

As for the girl, she vanished.

Was it worth it? Ask Vandergast.
You'd have to be Vandergast, looking through his eyes  
at the house across the street, in Orange, New Jersey.  
Maybe on wet days umbrellas and raincoats
set his heart thudding.
                                  Maybe
he talks to his pillow, and it whispers,  
moving red hair.

In any case, he will soon be forty.

Considering Chocolate

5x7 inches - acrylic on canvas board

This is my plan for a painting of two Hershsey's almond kisses.  I made the mistake of buying a bag of these little treats before Valentines Day, and we are hooked.  Anyway I painted this little value study and my husband told me it was hard for him to see what the it is.  "They're just shapes," was his comment.  I told him,"You're right, Sweetie!"  Tomorrow I'll add the color with oil paint.

I guess I should not show my work to friends or family, especially if I'm in the least ungenerous mood.  I took a couple things to show at my local painting group and found myself annoyed about well-intentioned critical comments.  I understand completely that they felt helpful, but I bristled at all of them.  I either need to learn to stay home when I'm in that sort of mood or find more gracious ways to accept criticism.  One thing I sometimes remember to say when I don't necessarily agree with what someone says is "You might be right." On the other hand, maybe we all need to ask before we offer advice, and see if it's welcome.  Next week maybe I'll take along a little bag of chocolate just to be sure we're all happy with each other.

The Prelude
By Matthew Zapruder

Oh this Diet Coke is really good,
though come to think of it it tastes
like nothing plus the idea of chocolate,
or an acquaintance of chocolate
speaking fondly of certain times
it and chocolate had spoken of nothing,
or nothing remembering a field
in which it once ate the most wondrous
sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese
yet still wished for a piece of chocolate
before the lone walk back through
the corn then the darkening forest
to the disappointing village and its super
creepy bed and breakfast. With secret despair
I returned to the city. Something
seemed to be waiting for me.
Maybe the “chosen guide” Wordsworth
wrote he would even were it “nothing
better than a wandering cloud”
have followed which of course to me
and everyone sounds amazing.
All I follow is my own desire,
sometimes to feel, sometimes to be
at least a little more than intermittently
at ease with being loved. I am never
at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk
and look at the brightly colored
houses filled with lives, not with night
when I lie on my back and listen,
not with the hallway, definitely
not with baseball, definitely
not with time. Poor Coleridge, son
of a Vicar and a lake, he could not feel
the energy. No present joy, no cheerful
confidence, just love of friends and the wind
taking his arrow away. Come to the edge
the edge beckoned softly. Take
this cup full of darkness and stay as long
as you want and maybe a little longer.

Coffee With Cream, and a Poem

11x14 inches, oil on canvas

Last fall my husband and I spent a week at Dillman's Resort, where I took an excellent workshop by Robert Burridge, and my husband did his best to explore the area by bicycle, despite heavy rains.  One of my favorite memories is the mornings we talked down to the pier with our coffee, and listened to the cries of loons out on Sand Lake. I painted this from a photo I took one morning, and remembering the beauty of that fall day is helping me deal with late winter.

[Over a cup of coffee]

By Stephen Dobyns

Over a cup of coffee or sitting on a park bench or
walking the dog, he would recall some incident
from his youth—nothing significant—climbing a tree
in his backyard, waiting in left field for a batter's
swing, sitting in a parked car with a girl whose face
he no longer remembered, his hand on her breast
and his body electric; memories to look at with
curiosity, the harmless behavior of a stranger, with
nothing to regret or elicit particular joy. And
although he had no sense of being on a journey,
such memories made him realize how far he had
traveled, which, in turn, made him ask how he
would look back on the person he was now, this
person who seemed so substantial. These images, it
was like looking at a book of old photographs,
recognizing a forehead, the narrow chin, and
perhaps recalling the story of an older second
cousin, how he had left long ago to try his luck in
Argentina or Australia. And he saw that he was
becoming like such a person, that the day might
arrive when he would look back on his present self
as on a distant relative who had drifted off into
uncharted lands.

The Old Team

farm horses  - between 1925 - 1935?

My husband and I drove to my brother's house for Christmas Eve.  Our family doesn't get together often, but since Mother died a few years ago we've agreed to meet on that day.  This year I gave my brother a CD copy of the extended family tree, a project I've been working on about five years.  It has photographs, stories, and a cast of several thousand characters going back to pre Revolution days.  Brother wanted to know who all these people were, and that, of course, is what I have been trying to discover since I started the project.  Who are these people, and how do their lives inform us who we are today?  Why bother with events and people long past and often forgotten?

Sometimes there are clues, as with these photos that Mother had kept from our paternal grandparents. There are others of farm animals, horses, and many of chickens and geese.  I suspect my grandmother was the photographer, since she is rarely in the photographs, and she was the one who kept hens for their eggs.  I recognize the corn crib in the background, so I know this picture was taken on our farm.  Perhaps the sleigh was stored in the center, the place where Dad kept a tractor when I was small.  But there is much I don't know.  When did Grandpa finally stop using horses?  Did he keep them out of affection until they finally died, or did he sell them out of economic necessity?  There is nobody to ask any more, so I find myself inventing stories, which is what I sometimes do for people who are distantly related on the family tree.  I gather clues were I can, and make up stories for myself when that is the only thing I can do.

Inventing a Horse
By Meghan O'Rourke

Inventing a horse is not easy.
One must not only think of the horse.
One must dig fence posts around him.
One must include a place where horses like to live;

or do when they live with humans like you.
Slowly, you must walk him in the cold;
feed him bran mash, apples;
accustom him to the harness;

holding in mind even when you are tired
harnesses and tack cloths and saddle oil
to keep the saddle clean as a face in the sun;
one must imagine teaching him to run

among the knuckles of tree roots,
not to be skittish at first sight of timber wolves,
and not to grow thin in the city,
where at some point you will have to live;

and one must imagine the absence of money.
Most of all, though: the living weight,
the sound of his feet on the needles,
and, since he is heavy, and real,

and sometimes tired after a run
down the river with a light whip at his side,
one must imagine love
in the mind that does not know love,

an animal mind, a love that does not depend
on your image of it,
your understanding of it;
indifferent to all that it lacks:

a muzzle and two black eyes
looking the day away, a field empty
of everything but witchgrass, fluent trees,
and some piles of hay.

The Longest Night, and Lights

Winter Solstice Chant
By Annie Finch

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,
now you are uncurled and cover our eyes
with the edge of winter sky
leaning over us in icy stars.
Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,
come with your seasons, your fullness, your end.

Snow, and Lack Of

6x6 inches, acrylic on paper

The other night I sat with a large group of retired friends for Friday night fish fry, listening to the hardiest of the group bemoan our lack of snow so far this year.  I had to bite my tongue, having already declared my lack of enthusiasm for football, about my similar lack of enthusiasm for snow. I didn't want to be ejected from the table.  Despite my northern European genetic background, and despite having lived almost sixty-one years in Wisconsin, I don't like snow.  I don't like being stiff and cold, don't enjoy being afraid to drive on icy country roads or nervous that I may slip and break one a bone.  When one long-time friend and happy grandmother said she was thinking of organizing a sledding party - once snow actually falls - I just chewed my potato pancake and smiled.  For me, sledding is only a memory.  As a child I dragged my little sled up the small hills on the farm, and once, wanting more of a thrill, hauled an aluminum saucer onto the roof of the chicken coop and slip off the snowy incline onto a pile of plowed snow near the driveway, but that was when I was more resilient.  I also slid down hills at UW Whitewater on fiberglass trays from the cafeteria, but that was when I was dumber.

Anyway, I decided to attempt a painting based on a small 1935 black and white photo I found of my mother and her older sister.  They are standing outside in a dim and snowy landscape, bits of snow falling past the camera lens.  It was interesting, mostly fun, and frustrating.  The little girl in red is my mother, and the painting actually resembles her.  The older girl is  OK in a general way,  maybe a little old looking, but she in no way resembles my dear aunt.  I wish I could have tweaked her features more, but I feared overworking the painting even more than I had already.  At least the girls call to mind a time a place, and painting them gave me time to imagine their life between the two world wars, on a cold day in Wisconsin.

The Snow Man    
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.