Writing Spaces

The notebook or novel-in-progress has only momentarily been put down; a brief pause in which to consider the world anew . . .

image:  Seven Arts Friends

Belonging

Funny how it comes together here
the afternoon of the pow-wow

in Waimea, Hawaii—

the upcountry town with chickens

always grilling on a spit beyond

the row of twelve or thirteen churches—

as if something in me has healed,

after the years of longing

for things I can’t have or be.

Or grafted, maybe, like the pear trees

our landlord has married

(Seckel to Bartlett, Comice to Bosq)

back in our California yard. 

In a real sense

I am of these people, all of them—

the Indian dancers

         with fine feathered wings

Hawaiians

mainland tribes

earth dwellers,

Theirs are my ways:  the old ways

I have come to this island to learn;

the way the Tao is said to be;

the way I feel here, longing

and belonging, welcomed home.

—Christie

Writing Spaces

It looks to me as if the demoiselle sitting in Bonnard's lovely garden could be working on an iPad or laptop . . .  Knowing that I might well be if I were there!

image:  Pierre Bonnard, Terrasse a Vernon

Class Exercise, with Dachsund

I haven’t found my way clear

to being an artist.

Everyone can tell

my glasses are always too clean,

no unexpected dabs

of burnt umber or crimson lake,

my hair never askew,

nothing you could call artistic, really.

I watch my dachsund running

in ear-flying loops

around my uninspired garden

that is not the garden of an artist

though he thinks it paradise enow,

and finding an alluring sea

of broken blue Italian tiles

beside a patch of neglected oregano,

precipitates himself

into the deepest wave,

then dries himself by rolling on

the bath towel I’ve left out on the step,

with gentlemanly courtesy.

All of this stirs up my urge

to pick a #2 boar’s bristle brush

out of the brushes in the coffee can

in what is not a studio, to run it

in a wriggling line of sassy color

along the quellingly white wall

of the plain room where I’ve spent

too much of my life

teaching myself to get used to it.

—Christie