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| '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
