When tidying up and cleaning I am always distracted by poetry

Statues in the Park

By Billy Collins

I thought of you today
when I stopped before an equestrian statue
in the middle of a public square,

you who had once instructed me
in the code of these noble poses.

A horse rearing up with two legs raised,
you told me, meant the rider had died in battle.

If only one leg was lifted,
the man had elsewhere succumbed to his wounds;

and if four legs were touching the ground,
as they were in this case-
bronze hooves affixed to a stone base-
it meant that the man on the horse,

this one staring intently
over the closed movie theater across the street,
had died of a cause other than war.

In the shadow of the statue,
I wondered about the others
who had simply walked through life
without a horse, a saddle, or a sword-
pedestrians who could no longer
place one foot in front of the other.

I pictured statues of the sickly
recumbent on their cold stone beds,
the suicides toeing the marble edge,

statues of accident victims covering their eyes,
the murdered covering their wounds,
the drowned silently treading the air.

And there was I,
up on a rosy-gray block of granite
near a cluster of shade trees in the local park,
my name and dates pressed into a plaque,

down on my knees, eyes lifted,
praying to the passing clouds,
forever begging for just one more day.

Billy Collins is always so precise, accessible and this is just how I feel. Tomorrow I will take "The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems" with me, just incase I get stuck in traffic.

Poetry on a rainwashed day

Days go by. Trying to work through paintings and there are things that have to be done, that need to be done, for visits away. Nicky Potter has been amazingly patient organizing a two week trip around England, ( Manchester, South-end-on Sea, Hackney for the Starlit Festival, Cambridge and Norfolk for the Norfolk Children's Bookshop)and I have to admit that the highlight for me will be working in the story teepee in London Zoo, because afterwards I hope to meet an animal or two, watch a tiger, and talk with some of the keepers maybe.

My painting has been elegantly ordered by the softer and  poetic hour glass and I have been wandering the net looking and learning about hour glass timers, so soon there will be an hour glass shaped posting.

A box arrived with a wonderful delivery from Iris Milward. So beautiful. She made the tile above from the simplest line sketch that I did at Art in Action in July. I love her work and cannot believe that she sells at such amazingly reasonable prices. The words woven in the hares say;

 

The night has a thousand eyes

And the day but one

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

 

The mind has a thousand eyes

And the heart but one

Yet the light of the whole life dies

When love is done.

 

 

Such a beautiful thing to arrive on a rainy dark day.

 

I painted, as sand slipped through glass, all the time thinking of making painted hour glasses. And maybe a 24 hour glass.

Tap tap tippity tap tap, ping.

Thinking aloud in the pages of my sketchbook. Cheetahs and goldfinches, and clover.

 

 

The fields around here are full with clover. Amazing how beautiful these flowers are on close inspection.

 

 

Typewriters are multiplying in my studio, a small Olympia and a larger one that is more brittle. I would still like an old fashioned portable black typewriter with gold paint on. There is something about the way that you have to write on a typewriter. I think perhaps they would be good for poetry, because you have to think very carefully about what you write before your fingers begin to move as any mistaykes you mite make cannott be easily reckdefyd.

Meanwhile John Foley arived and I tormented him with paintings that were sold that he can't have for the exhibition, showed him sketches for work in mind, and seals sleeping on smooth stone beaches. We then went to The Shed at Porthgain and they fed me mussels while I signed books, so they now have a good stock, including The Ice Bear, which will be published on Thursday, the same day as Seamus Heaney's new book of poetry.

I am looking forward to seeing the photos from John's visit.

Hmmm.......

Painting bees and flowers, but can smell cake cooking. Must be ghost cakes. Hannah phoned. She has been eating cherries straight from a French tree. She was sitting on a windowsill and it is hot outside and she and Gwen cycle every morning to  buy bread for breakfast. Holiday. Tom has a rowing race on Saturday and I know that there should be more things on my list of things to do.

I have been listening to rain on the roof, sheep bleat and Alice Oswald's Dart. Her words are tangled with the subtle weight and colour of water.