One Step Closer to Knowing and associated poems

"Looking Out, Looking In¹

'The reproductions on pale-painted walls wide boards along worn floors shade-less windows, sunlit halls the ease and creak of every open door in this strange house, this inert, lovely space where Wyeth met his muse and painted an affectionate grace. Though Christina's World, seems to suffuse an uncasy, contorted merey, a dubious light.

"Windows are eyes or pieces of the soul?"² As the docent engages us in this story it feels like gazing through a tiny keyhole into what I see as a broken woman's purgatory; images of a hundred cats, peeling wallpaper, two generations of accumulated stuff, windows ghosting curious children or a neighbor and this one artist who couldn't get enough of the bent, shell-encased, bright, free soul.

I, along with all the rest, gawk and gape mute before the spare luminance of this curious landscape, this house - emptied now - at least of Their humanness is not barren.

She never saw it so.

In breath and bone, not egg tempera through blind-less windows all earth is painted in this frame. The splendor of Christina's World a fierce burning beacon a life-light living in darkness that crippled, broken, bloodied, dead is for me alive and a light again.

1 " Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In, was an exhibition that ran at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC from May 4 - November 30, 2014, focusing on "the visual complexities posed by the transparency, symbolism, and geometric structure of windows" . www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2014/andrew-wyeth.html 2 "In the portraits of that house, the windows are eyes or pieces of the soul almost. To me, each window is a different part of Christina's life. " Andrew Wyeth www.farnsworthmuseum.org/olson-house

A Natural Unforced Confidence 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 33/64 x 23 27/64 in.

Etched plate pressed on eager sheets carbon based inks bleed a dissertation an opus (no magnum just yet). From dust we were made all of us varying lifeforms organic images etching with graphite and clay, pigment and language, into onto lives on lives on lives a singular impression.

A New Depth of Richness 11/14, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 33/64 x 23 15/32 in.

The inner core of everything that is place, person, this planet iridescent patches of presence present. Imprinted deep in us (and in this place) an exposition of the glory we see only faintly echoes of a past impinging a frail future present flash of pleasure or memory of pain the sensitive dependence in one small incandescent wing.

An Unusually Full Season 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 19/32 x 23 37/64 in.

You are both marked - jagged, knotted, tracking subtractions, additions pain known and unremembered foundation stories hidden indelible lines tracing a barely spoken cruel artistry perverse decorations, lives overlaying wounds a warped mirror of the other,

Two. Reprieved.

Two granted stays.

Trace the scarred pain-etchant intaglio etched flesh, fractured beauty, sure and certain.

It's Leaving a Mark on Me 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 43/64 x 23 13/16 in.

People come from far away lay in this field view this house - closer than you may think mimicking his image though into the future. This house is all houses and we in one small woman scrabbling, frantic, determined to imbue immortality our own bent shapes, immobile effervescence.

Life Flows Both Ways 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 9/16 x 23 35/64 in.

When we were young and summers full in equal measure, of grace and judgement in the games we played. We ran

until our lungs expanded full of sweet summer air, hid in the canopy of the willow, behind paint-peeling Adirondack chairs. Ragged breathed,

heart pounding, willing silence against the tinny clang of a metal garbage lid, murmured voices of adults in the summer porch, screened against our exuberance and mosquitos.

Suspended in that brief exemption before obligation, not wanting, wanting to be found, laughing, we stayed until the constellations found us and 'ollie, ollie oxen free' called us home.

Often It Feels Like Enough 12/15, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 41/64 x 23 45/64 in.

The calendar says spring the sun bathes through the evergreens the lilac bush pulses buds But there are vestiges of snow and the little pond wears a molting coat of ice Winter's heavy veil still bartering death, though a devalued currency. In my own burial clothes Lachrymose beneath a cold spectrum of unbelief faintly a chickadee proclaims a tiny piercing promise the scandal of new life.

That Deep Rooting 11/14, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 33/64 x 23 5/8 in.

Search this pale and soul-less empty shell, whitewashed, scrubbed clean Those of us who show up here, way off the beaten track, even for northern New England prowl the space searching for God knows what. A heartbeat maybe Something to connect to that strange and arresting image, the crooked person Splayed upon spiky grass Lone house against a troubling sky Something is very off. Can't quite put my finger on it I an imposter skald, Parnassian, not quite seeing just what it is barely scratching a surface with elemental words It's never so simple than when it's simple. Straightforward, realist, the critics decry, dismiss. Perhaps, just this once, the twisted sepulcher façade Cracks, breathes a revelatory courage ascending through the form my own singular resurrection.

The Hunger for Recognition 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 9/16 x 23 5/8 in.

I search for meaning in these walls check the closets, imbue significance on a chair in a corner a seashell on a shelf Peer outside command my imagination to see the ghost, the shadows sifting shape scrabbling along the ground inching towards or away from me not clearly always on the edges Something is beyond the horizon I know or here in here A minor anointing or haunting one or the other

The Lines Can Get Blurred 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 19/32 x 23 1/2 in.

In this place the ethereal shift and shimmer in our peripheral vision We turn to catch a glimpse and there is nothing there our own reflection on wavy glass an opaque impression a skittering just through that door around the corner.

The Loneliness of Discernment 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 9/16 x 23 35/64 in.

This window frames the fear that faces us, Or that we ignore One or the other.

Am I really safe this side? The house my protection and my pulpit I freely pronounce curses insurance against the unknown other.

That figure, close up, That image in the glass a startlingly intimacy though our breath fogs the panes obscures and obfuscates so dark we cannot even see our face a willful blindness cursed to weave skewed parodies of the world.

The Loss of a Dream 12/15, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 19/32 x 23 57/64 in.

Hobbled, constrained, shackled, the house as prison now whitewashed and scrubbed of all that made it home and holy empty now, a faint memory of dirt-streaked panes, unused stairs echoing arched and useless limbs. Lone figure summarizing all the stories in this one pain body-specific bent, arched away and toward Cruciform Though unchosen in this instance.

There's a Lot I Don't Know 9/12, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 9/16 x 23 16/16 in.

Shards of shattered light reshape and break the geometrics of windows, walls, floor a roof a door. A shape disturbs the still air The knowable and known visions still seen alternatively, light and dark though we can comprehend only one

This Infusion of Light 13/16, 2019 Etching on Zinc 17 9/16 x 23 1/2 in.

The room's windows admit and refract light sun streaming in and waning as the day Now early evening blue shifts to black outside an orb sinks below earth's edge

on the stool in the storage room front and centre, shrinking in an unfamiliar habitat and unaccustomed form, odd shapes nestled as they are, in the carton that once housed eggs (though sterile) their golden-eyes feed my shell.

these bulbs I'm drying cach shrinking, desiccating shape belies life, their paper shells rustle a hazy remembrance of wide fields a remarkable optimism from the basement tomb until fall-buried embryonic longing for warm resurrection. and when I visit you your own body a betrayal once capable encased now in an opaque-paper skin emphatic, strident speech now Jabberwocky blue eyes vacant, pale (that used to see me through and through me) you held me once - though I cannot recall now in this grand diminishing I take your trembling hand meld stories, memories, till light and darkness blur in grief and hope-filled renaissance.