While waiting for my new images to arrive by snail mail, I’ve been using my collage as a prompt for poetry. So far I’m finding that without a pre-determined focus in the making, my writing is moving more in its own direction and less in mine. I don’t feel so compelled to wring meaning from every image.
In other words I’m stepping off the path and wandering off. I can see I’m still more attracted to purple flowers than blue ones, but at least I am not setting out to pick a bouquet of purely lavender hues. In fact I can pass the violets by without a glance while chasing butterflies…
Reality
Aromatic coffee wakes me.
Scent from the steaming cup creeps
into my dream, slips beneath closed doors,
between tight-locked window panes
and brings me back to bedsheets and sunshine,
crisp-folded napkins, and the morning news.
I blink, changing worlds each time eyes
shut open, open shut.
Staring across the threshold of my tray
into mystic daimon worlds where mystery
manifests in different forms
from native prophets’, I wonder
why familiarity breeds contempt. How
we fail to honor miracles that surge
like restless crowds beyond the nictitating eyelid
with which we veil second sight, third eye, active
imagination. We notice
the fluttering moth, but fail
to perceive the prescient mites
migrating toward its ear; grab
a fistful of mixed nuts, but never ponder
the strange collaboration between bee,
flood, and fish that lets Brazil nuts propagate.
We scorn connection at our peril.
One wing flapping
can wreck a world
or save it.
This is another piece that came. As I reread it just now, I realized I was unconsciously applying the “I Am One Who” SoulCollage® method of dialog, in which an image in the card is allowed to speak through the artist about itself.
Fusion
She is the old one, grass green,
shot through with veriditas, wearing
serpent as succubus, confidant, familiar—
ancient chthonic companion, Jezebel
of Eden. The one who tempts us
to love what we are.