Symmetry / This Recurring Kindness

Symmetry. Multiple dyeing and printing processes on cotton and silk; hand stitched.

My piece, Symmetry (above), followed by the poem Tera Freese wrote in response. To read more about this project see my previous post.

This Recurring Kindness by Tera Freese

Every August it happens white blaze of afternoon ripens the fruit makes even the birds fat as queens.

Here they are now twittering and thrashing in the high sweet grasses, dark wings dusted with deep gold pollens throwing confetti of fireweed days of merriment and feasting.

Even in their tiny eyes – a bright exuberant health as in something that has come ’round again to meet it’s full potential.

These are the same mourning doves that eat dark oily seed from my pale palm after the curtain of Autumn has dropped.

Yes, even when there is not this bounty, there is still enough. For that which dwells in the first hung star is there, too, in the last to fade to morning’s tide.

Evening Star / A Walk With Sadness

Here is Tera’s poem (the one I chose to respond to of the four she shared with me) along with my piece. In working on my piece, I allowed the imagery and emotional tone of the poem to stimulate my imagination. 

A Walk With Sadness by Tera Freese
Sadness sits in my lap like a small child — Brown tears, hot plum breath.

Standing, I zip her up, safe inside my coat like an infant in a sling.

Look, I whisper — the white legs of birch, The lake’s many ice rafts rising and falling on her huge abdomen, The yellow globe of moon winding with the trail.

There, the cold ripples of ice resemble an elephant’s trunk, The slight thaw having dripped and froze again two massive wings growing from the steep silver cliff.

and — look — bright Venus Like a place you visited long ago and are waiting to return to.

I keep still — and – like a carpet rolling outward into shimmers of sky, like all of the sages reaching back through fields of time — Sadness unfolds and is gone.

Dyes and pigments on cotton

Symmetry / This Recurring Kindness

My piece, Symmetry, followed by the poem Tera Freese wrote in response. To read more about this project see this post: Venus: Poets and Fiber Artists Reflect and Evening Star/A Walk with Sadness.

Symmetry

This Recurring Kindness
by Tera Freese

Every August it happens
white blaze of afternoon
ripens the fruit
makes even the birds
fat as queens.

Here they are now
twittering and thrashing in the high
sweet grasses, dark wings dusted
with deep gold pollens
throwing confetti of fireweed
days of merriment and feasting.

Even in their tiny eyes –
a bright exuberant health
as in something that has come ’round again
to meet it’s full potential.

These are the same mourning doves
that eat dark oily seed
from my pale palm after the curtain
of Autumn has dropped.

Yes, even when there is not this bounty,
there is still enough.
For that which dwells in the first hung star
is there, too, in the last to fade
to morning’s tide.