That is the official name for the December full moon according to the Farmer's Almanac which has been spectacular here over the past week. Below is a poem Sarah Merrill wrote earlier this fall and kindly unearthed for us when I pleaded for a moon poem.
Gibbous Moon
A crisp morning in early autumn finds me standing optimistically
with my son by the big tree
at precisely seven-thirty, waiting for the school bus to arrive
and take my child away to someone else’s care and professional knowingness.
While we wait we watch our breaths gather before us and disperse,
gather and disperse, gather and so on until someone’s child points up to the sky.
A pale moon seems to hover too close.
“But mom, why is the moon here in the morning?”
I adjust my son’s backpack and consider how
with increasing frequency I do not have answers to the Questions.
How I’m saved by the pillow of virtual information
that cushions my constant sense of falling.
In the afternoon I lead my child back to the big tree
and I point up where the moon used to be. My wisdom is memorized:
That was a gibbous moon, you saw, Sweetie, precisely eighty-one percent—a waxing or waning moon that can look like a full moon but it’s not.
Even as my son is nodding his head I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
But anyway, my digital words disperse in the darkening afternoon,
already forgotten as he runs toward the house.
Sarah Merrill
"Always...before exchanging the flow of life for the concentration of painting she had a few moments of nakedness when she seemed like an unborn soul, a soul reft of body, hesitating on some windy precipice and exposed unprotected, to all the blasts of doubt."
During my trip to Missouri I had the time to luxuriate in "To the Lighthouse". My copy is a loan from my friend and poet Sarah. I am floored by how eloquently Virginia Woolf describes the feeling of vulnerability and the raging cacophony of threats from within that usually assail one before settling in to make art. (I also like how I come away from her writing feeling that I have permission to go bananas with run on sentences and adjectives, though that may be a burden for my readers.)
Paintings #s408 and 409 are 6"x6", oil on masonite, available here and here, respectively. That is the very last of our pears this season.
A chickadee of some sort, can you tell me what? with South Carolina state flower Yellow Jessamine. 8"x10", oil on canvas panel, available here.
From local poet Sarah Merrill:
Yellow bird, yellow bird
lovely shade of spring,
you fill our skies with throaty cries
and dancing yellow wings,
those wings!
your dancing yellow wings.
My son, Captain Spectacular, turned 5 on friday. I painted this from a photo thats been moldering in the file since last june. oil on canvas, 12"x12"
daily poem by Sarah J. Merrill,
the deer
Swiftly turning in the yellow grass,
there is a lithe figure moving through our field
who could not possibly be my son.
There is a competence in his small body
for which I’m not quite ready. Here I am
transfixed at the window. I was here at this window
another morning before my son was born,
when a small deer stepped
tentatively from the winter-trampled field
and stood in the driveway. He stood there a long time
smelling the air, pale against the asphalt,
and I was unable to move away.
I willed him back toward the field, the dense woods,
that way, that way, I thought, my face at the glass.
But of course I could not warn him
about any of the things that I knew.
I could not keep him in the yellow
field with the sun on his back,
a window around him, framing his life.
The G.W. Parkway in the D.C. area is one of my favorite roads to travel. oil on canvas, 9"x12".I Daily poem by Sarah Merrill: I love driving on beautiful roads. the northern california coast always took my breath away. I remember one drive in particular on a spring day with the windows down with my best friend in all the world by my side. I don't have a "real" poem for now, but here's a little ditty in honor of driving on lovely roads:
Behind the wheel and way
ahead of myself--before me this road,
ecstactic with curves,
colors blowing into my windows and I'm
out of my mind
with joy, I've rolled 'em
all the way down
to invite this road in.
My new favorite expletive. Today my friend Laura (who, incidentally made the pink meringue featured in the last post) told me she had kumquats for me to paint as they tasted foul. I was too impatient to wait for Laura's kumquats and googled some instead. (This paintings has sold.)
Daily poem by Sarah Merrill:
the little kumquats
in thier quaint and dainty pile,
painted bright with sunshine,
inviting us to smile.
But when you bite that tender skin
you'll loose a bitter cry!
That sunny little orange fruit
is a lovely little lie.
Last night I took a walk around Providence College, as I often do, and that inspired daily painting #20. I have always wanted to make paintings of dark places but, well, I just haven't. This practice of daily painting is helping me be more cavalier and unconcerned about the outcome. Liberating.
Daily Poem by Sarah Merrill:
I was out walking at night
and the bright windows slowed me down,
called me to look inside.
But when I craned my neck, went up on tiptoes to see
what was in those lit squares I realized
it was not in those hopeful windows I was looking,
but inside my own restless home.
(Sold.)
Daily Poem by Sarah Merrill:
The artichoke would not yield
its secrets until I'd warmed
and buttered it. That tough green fruit
kept up its guard
until someone sang its praises,
leaf by leaf by leaf.
