Moon Flower and a little Tess Gallagher

Here is another art quilt - I have two yoga quilts and hope to do one more for a nice three in a row for the show. This one is the Moon Flower pose - it goes with Sunflower pose and both are supposed to be very good for banishing depression as well as good for warming up. The background is a rambling, funky Spokane out the 4th floor huge windows. It's not exact but more what I think I'm seeing upside down... twisted and in another 'zone'. Think I might like it better than the 'real' view. :) I'm about to write all over this one...

I thought I'd do something different and share some of my favorite things with you this year. One of my favorite things I always come back to is poetry. I used to write tons of it and at one time was going to major in creative writing with poetry emphasis... but other things went on and I went down many paths before choosing again. Anyway, enjoy!

Oh, this book of poems is one of my all time favorites. She came to my college in her hometown of Port Angeles, WA right before this one was being published. She read a few poems and I was gone. Absolutely besotted with her reading and style of writing. Her husband had recently passed away - Raymond Carver - and there are a lot of grief-riddled pieces in this one but still, the beauty of her work sometimes overwhelms me. Here are a few samples:

I Stop Writing The Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives or who dies, I'm still a woman.

I'll always have plenty to do.

I bring the arms of his shirt

together. Nothing can stop

our tenderness. I'll get back

to the poem. I'll get back to being

a woman. But for now

there's a shirt, a giant shirt

in my hands, and somewhere a small girl

standing next to her mother

watching to see how it's done.

Trace, In Unison

Terrible, the rain. All night, rain

that I love. So the weight of his leg

falls again like a huge tender wing

across my hipbone. Its continuing - the rain,

as he does not. Except as that caress

most inhabited. Ellipsis of

eucalyptus. His arms, his beautiful

careless breathing. Inscription

contralto where his lips graze

the bow of my neck. Muslin half-light.

Musk of kerosene in the hall, fixative

to ceaselessly this rain, in which

there is nothing to do but be happy, be

free, as if someone sadly accused

came in with their coat soaked through

and said, "But I only wanted

to weep and love," and we rolled toward

the voice like one body and said

with our eyes closed, "Then weep, then

love." Buds of jasmine threaded through

her hair so they opened after dark,

brightening the room. that morning

rain as it would fall, still

falling, and where we had lain,

an arctic light steady

in the mind's releasing.

~Tess Gallagher, 1992