snakes where there were none
ivory glint
fractured rain
fog sulks low in the stirrups
of Tiger Mountain
where
a 20-footed, black-suited
curtain stumbles to not reveal not
until the utmost
a walking wall
once
closed the street by Van Gogh by our home
stretching essing flexing
it’s limestone tendrils
found in a Missouri quarry by an Englishman
now sleeping in the hall of fine art
due east of the shuttlecocks.
I’ve mentioned Andy Goldsworthy before. At least once. He’s one of my favorite visual/conceptual artists who is always making interesting sculptures that accentuate and highlight nature and its impermanence. Art in the ordinary extraordinary. While living in Kansas City he did an installation a quarter mile from our apartment, a “walking wall” that, over time, he and his crew would move from a field, across a street, around the Nelson-Atkins museum and through a window. The process took multiple months.
At our wedding, there was a moment just before the ceremony (after photos) where the rain was picking up and the guests were arriving — the groomsmen formed an arm-linked “wall” and moved slowly across the grounds with D ducking behind us so she could stay hidden.
I’m still thinking about changing the direction of rivers (from the last two poems). Also a line from Tyson Yukaporta “We don’t have a word for non-linear in our language because nobody would consider traveling, thinking, or talking in a straight line in the first place. The winding path is just how a path is.”
Strange how a wall, as well as other forms of boundaries, can be an obstruction, a path, support, protection… an occasion. Strange the assumption of a straight and static line.
Thanks for reading! (A bit under the weather this week so I’m sparing you the audio version.)