Beneath The Surface no 2
30 x 22 inches
Acrylic
The abstract expressionist painter, Joan Mitchell, when asked to describe her art volleyed back, "I can't explain it. It's poetry on canvas!"
I don't care for poetry that dances at the edges of allegorical ambiquity; such a tease.
I like poetry that dances on the solid imagination, where the mind lands on a knowable surface.
Where the poet strings together a series of words which immediately paint the canvas of my mind with seeable imagery.
No surprise my three favorite poets are Mary Oliver, Billy Collins and Leonard Cohen and I also love the meditative, prayer like poetry of John O'Donohue.
The poem and the poet live on when we pass on their poems to new eyes, fresh hearts, true minds. This morning I read the poem below.
Her word path is clear, subject complex, but not in a pompous, elitist way, and at the end of the journey, you are left in awe - at least I was.
When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as nor more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field of daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all mu life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver
