The change of season brought out a lot of new work for me. Observation, exploration, introspection, plus, a weekly activity that has grown increasingly important to me, which I haven't shared with anyone before...

I read poetry to my dog on Sunday mornings.

We've made it through an impressive stack of books over the past few months. Mack nods in and out of sleep but if I stop reading for any reason he opens his eyes to see why. Poetry is meant to be read out loud and shared. I'm so thankful to have his ears to fill with poetry, the morning sun warming his fur.

At the moment, we are reading The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, a Michigan poet born in Saginaw. In this particular section of the poem, A Field of Light, he uses the words, "The lovely diminutives," which is a good way to describe the the things that usually interest me the most and help me create anything.

I invite you to read this passage out loud:

Listen, love.
The fat lark sang in the field;
I touched the ground, the ground warmed by the killdeer,
The salt laughed and the stones;
The ferns had their ways, and the pulsing lizards,
And the new plants, but still awkward in their soil,
The lovely diminutives.
I could watch! I could watch!
I saw the separateness of all things!
My heart lifted up with the great grasses;
The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds.
There were clouds making a rout of shapes
crossing a windbreak of cedars,
And a bee shaking drops from a rain-soaked honeysuckle.
The worms were delighted as wrens.
And I walked, I walked through the light air;
I moved with the morning.

***

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The favorite flowers of my life: in my mother’s garden, what I grew in my own garden when I had one, the ones growing in parking lots—feeding bees and goldfinches, the ones by the side of the road, or hidden in the thick forest, the ones growing in the gardens of friends, the ones that look so fragile but are stronger than we can imagine. The tall bearded irises that have a scent like licorice. The patterns and colors and shapes that repeat like the constellations and are made of the same thing. The names and the lore and the bouquets and the symbolism. William Carlos Williams contemplating wild Queen Anne’s Lace. Theodore Roethke on the roof of the greenhouse. Basho’s heart breaking with every bloom under the moonlight. And the belief that I can still be surprised at any given moment by beauty and hope.

This painting represents this bursting feeling that starts at the beginning of the blooming season. Some things break through in the sketchy days of April, but May is when it all begins, and then continues through the last days of October. And my heart depends on it.

View up close in the gallery.