fiber

Confluence

1
The music of birds gathers
in the minglings of sky and trees.

2
Voices weave separate paths that cross
each other and echo into themselves.

3
Who arranges the sequences
into song, the patterns into stories?

4
Who maps the contingent journey
of roots and branches?

5
Who casts the landscape into wings
that lift spirit into light?

I’ve been wanting to try a cadralor, and Bjorn at dVerse gave me a push by suggesting the form in his prompt. I’ve also been worrying a poem for earthweal, where Sherry asked us to look for “moments of collateral beauty“. Having a specific form to work with helped me to organize my thoughts.

I know: birds again. Yes.

The stitching was inspired by the art of Joan Mitchell, as was all the art I did for NaPoWriMo 18. It seems a lifetime ago now.

the inside out

The Oracle was a bit enigmatic today. I’ve matched her words with a collage box oracle message–another piece of art recently rediscovered in my cleaning.

almost the fool’s eye
the voice of our unreason
less dazzle more magic

dancing clouds surround eternity
stars remember breath flying
this wild ocean of sky

why not yet

at bay

shadows edge flush along the side
of day, post sentries that abide
within the holes where secrets hide

when sun falls sudden into night
colors retreat to black and white,
orbiting like a satellite,
a rippled undulating tide

unlike a dream which speaks in signs,
eidola plot their own decline–
they vanish in between the lines,
a hushed wake of penumbral glide

Grace at dVerse introduced us to a new poetry form: Zéjel. In my recent cleaning mode, I discovered the strange embroidery pictured above, and decided to compose a verse to accompany it.

I stitched this piece as an assignment for a class I took about 15 years ago–we were trying out new stitches. I can’t remember what inspired this design, nor can I figure out now how I produced some of these stitches. I may have kept notes about it, but I haven’t discovered them yet. But I have many boxes still to go through…

I found this poetic form to be a challenge, and I’m not sure I’m done tweaking what I wrote. But I do think its strangeness is a good match for the art.

recalibrations

where is the center?
always moving–
I can’t locate
the pivot

always moving–
the place of stillness,
the pivot
of this labyrinth

stillness
retracing
this labyrinth
emerging

retracing
beginning
emerging
expanding

to begin,
I relocate–
expanding
the center

For Earthweal, where Ingrid asks us to consider our labyrinthine times.

Aggregated

Why must we always quantify? 4, 3, 10. Add, subtract, multiply. Divide.

My prose poem, Aggregated, based on a painting by Hilma af Klint, was among those selected as a finalist in The Ekphrastic Review Women Artists contest. You can read the entire poem and see all the finalists here. The three winning selections are here.

also linking to dVerse OLN

incohesive

“Ecosystems are so similar to human societies—they’re built on relationships. The stronger they are, the more resilient the system.”—Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree

we keep dividing
designating
a hierarchy
to pull what we share
apart

and so each
of us is missing
parts
each of us is
incomplete

why do we cling
to our separation
our isolation
who we think we are
alone?

the foundation
is faltering
and still
we hold
on

collapsing
into
the deep
hole
of ourselves

During a presentation Suzanne Simard made, early in her career, about her research into the interrelationships between trees and other species in the forest, and how all were necessary in order for the forest to thrive, she mentioned also the threat to climate from disrupting these systems. “Climate change means nothing in Canada” one of the audience said afterwards.

For earthweal.

Manifest

Life is difficult.

Well of course it is. Easy is monotonous. Uncomplicated is boring.

What is possible must first be imagined.

Am I looking for the Land of Milk and Honey? Am I waiting for my Ship to Come In? Do I yearn for Promised Lands? Do I search for the Pots of Gold at the Ends of Rainbows?

Do I ask to be One of The Chosen Few?

No. I do not.

Weep at the world.

I am too busy.

Sharpening my oyster knife, so to speak.

Calling to the ocean, sailing on its moontides, seeking kinship on its shore. Culling only what still contains life, nourishment.

Cutting through the shiny exterior. Prying open the closed doors.

To see. What has been kept from me.

Secret, hidden, suppressed, denied.

A pearl or a grain of sand?

You can’t have one without the other.

Jade at dVerse has provided a quote from Zora Neale Hurston from “How Does it Feel to be Colored Me” in World Tomorrow for this week’s prosery: No, I do not weep at the world – I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Indeed she was.

lost languages

these names that have lost their origins
names that have lost their sounds
that have lost their meanings
lost meanings without references
without words words that once rolled off
the tongue rolled off the tongue
immense with meaning
with meaning now lost now
untranslatable immense and untranslatable
these names without meaning

these names belonging nowhere
belonging nowhere to no one to no one
at all invisible undernourished
undernourished and withered into invisibility
without a way a way to put sounds together
sounds that together form words
words that become names
these names that are lost

these names without scripts
without scripts or context without
the context of language a language
of mirrors mirrors now empty
mirrors that yield no answers
answers to questions questions
without context how and what and where
and why are they lost and where did they go
who knows the names the names the names
the names that have lost their meaning

For dVerse, where Bjorn has us chanting,

Ocular

I am still waiting for clarity–
sometimes I think about
the things I can’t see
and I wonder how
to place them inside my mind–

Out of the dark and still
I am dreaming of colors
liquid currents of sound
moving in all directions
between the gaps–

Do our visions swim
cataracted with refractions–
flooding the invisible
barriers of the portals
into our eyes?

As I told Phil, this week’s Kick-About prompt, fundus photography, was made for my watercolor mandalas. First, photographing the inner eye naturally makes for roundness, and the liquid state calls for watercolor to represent it.