Reflections and notes on the relationship of art to nature and of nature to art from along Warwoman Creek, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Katuah Province of Turtle Island, where the light, the dark, the seasons, the time of deep past, deep present and deep future all mix in alchemal mists to reveal and hide and transform these slopes, shaded coves, bright rivers, deep forests and me, and together sustain me and my art.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

DRAWING FROM OUR OWN TRUE NATURE (PART 2 - "This Line Drawn")

This Line Drawn




We pick up a piece of charred willow,
wrap our fingered sense
around it, its body soft as silk,
and draw from the arch
of a bison’s back
across a curve of wall
in the amber flare of tallow light.


In this amber flare of tallow light
is our line too
in this chambered hour
of now
drawn deep into the heart
of something else
that has always been




following all the dead
into the night,
behind the eyes
in this mind’s eye
in the light of this
dreambodyself

this line
blown perhaps with ash
by breath through reed
where no light comes at last
but into the dream that opens
like a flower of night
reaching, reaching,
again and again.





We draw, and are drawn into
the wild body
the animal body
the dream body
the vegetative body
nature’s body
rooted in heaven’s earth,
heaven’s earth
rooted in nature’s body,

the wild flame
of
the animal dance
in
the dream song’s breath
over
the rhizome’s circling
through
the greening flow
all
under the great tree.


© Laurence Holden 2013