Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Happy to be home

'Sauk Mountain' 17x23" oil pastel; Kathleen Faulkner

When I travel away from the Pacific Northwest I am always happy to be home.  Don't get me wrong.  I miss the friends I visit, I miss the excitement of traveling but, something about our little corner of the world has me  forever.
Yes, the winters are cold, wet, foggy;  a damp cold that chills to the bone.  The summers, especially this summer, less than satisfying with temperatures that compete with the winter temps of California, northern, that is.

There is a reason we are called the Evergreen state:  it's called rain. 

Rain is my inspiration.  It can be depressing at times but it is also a big part of the reason I create.  Art is what I taught myself to do at a very young age to keep the demons away.  It works well.


In the woods above Issaquah
near a grey farmhouse
we pick plums in the rain.
Another day, on Sauk Mountain,
we lie in a meadow.   A bird
jolts a stalk of fireweed
so the light seeds drift over us
     and down the slope.
Far below,  the Skagit River
winds toward the sea, turning
     like a pattern in old jade.
At home you put some tomatoes
on the window sill to ripen,
and I think of jade again.
Nights,
while a bird outside the window
begins to budge the night away
      with a single sound,
your breasts, your lips, your eyelids
are delicate as petals of
      winter poppies.
I don't know what happened,
One night, no use knocking on your door,
I stepped down from the front porch
as rain fell through big leaves and the grass woke up,
      and your face was
      a small round stone
      falling through dark water.


'In the Woods Above Issaquah'   Robert Sund