November’s Promise

Return to a Meadow – 16″ x 20″ x 1″ – mixed media on wood panel
November is my birthday month, and according to my horoscope, I have all kinds of goodness to anticiapte. Reading these monthly forecasts is one of my guilty pleasures; sometimes I get so caught up in the quagmire of my bad voices that having some benevolent stranger tell me that everything is going to be just fine snaps me right out of my negativity. It’s the power of suggestion in action, and when it brings me from down in the dumps to confidently optimistic, I’m a willing participant! After all, we really do control our destinies, both by engineering scenarios and by reacting to the myriad situations that come our way each day. The choices we make in any given situation, often infinitesimal and automatic but sometimes large and well-calculated, constantly shape and shift our paths. Making the choice to be positive, to be happy, always seems to clear my vision, and my path becomes easier to travel.

The above painting, which I finished yesterday, will be among the five I am showing in December-January at the IO Gallery.

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down

whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.

– Robert Duncan (1919- )