The posting before this features the work of my children creating beautiful papers for me for Fathers Day (see The Blank Page).  The following piece was the creation of my wife as she worked with the children to create their pieces, then doing what she does to/with her own…It is “untitled” approx 18×24, a collage of hand-colored papers by Holly Suzanne, and is followed by a text I composed in response / engagement with.

Layering the Reach / Reaching to Find

“but who is capable of all meanings at once?”

-Arkadii Dragomoshchenko-

 I see you in your gifting.

In the waves of water and soil.  What is fluid, what thick.  That can be seen, that goes under.

The moon continues to rise.

What made the first marking?  Who causes the stains?

.

“Your body is a book of thoughts…”

What is written in the body, held by the hand as it waves.

Rains do come.

I remember the patching and gauze.  The stitching and blood.

It followed the crushing and cuts.

Repair is the difficult love.  And the real.

.

Here you cover and here you expose.  And both are revealing.

I am thankful for passion, the purpling mind,

or no sunsets.  No grey.

It is easy to drown in a pool.

.

I salute with five points of a star and go rigid.  There is rust.

Yet you wriggle your way through the weight and the darkness, the pressuring springs – even joining contaminants it glues.

I praise in you the washes of light.  I raise up my hands.  In the air it creates a distortion.  The clouds continue to form.

There will be Winter, be Spring

and a Summer for making us Fall.

.

It goes on, the labor of layers – some providing a balance, some a stripping away.  Life is made, not born, or borne while it’s made…and you are becoming a master.  I remove and caress; I fear and I take…

You rebuild with the rawest materials – what seem “given” whether conjured or found.

And sometimes rejoice.

We can not count this in years, only layers, the stuff of concentric concern.  There’s a reach and a sway, a slip and a grasp, that we layer with finding,

again.

N Filbert 2012