Turning Quietly Into Night

Artist Carolyn Hutchings Edlund & I collaborated again for a National Poetry Month exhibit, "PAINTING = POETRY - ut pictura poesis": Realism in Paintings and Sculptures

Carolyn Hutchings Edlund

Turning Quietly Into Night

2009 Oil on canvas

Here You Are

All day you waited, trudged

along city blocks

past the hard shoulders of strangers,

thinking only of this bend in the path.

Your feet disappear beneath amber ripples

as you sink to the grass. Whorls

of mud silt over your toes and up

to the surface. Sun lingers along the clouds,

sly, keeping your secrets.

The oak must have thickened its bark here

for a hundred years,

season after season

against the weather,

against the deer,

against crimson vines

coiling around its base

and cloaking the trunk.

But it still spreads

its branches

wide and airy

into the sky.

The creek tucks into the meadow,

then ripples and twists into the grove.

This is where you stretch your reach.

Breathe deep.

Let go.

Here, you are.

Heather M. Moore Niver