Day Sixteen

Title: the pull of you is deep, stronger than the tides

It's been a few days since I posted. Between camera issues and just some general frustration with art, with life, with the cosmos, things haven't made it to the blog.

But, here I am.

This piece was a sore spot for a few days. It's gone through about three incarnations. The first was too simple. The second was too flat, not enough contrast. That was all in one day. When the thought crossed my mind to burn the piece, I knew it was time to leave it alone for awhile. I did, and when I came back, I still didn't like it but I was able to see a new direction, some small fixes, that might rescue the piece from total suckyness.

So it is what it is. Not my favorite. Which is a bit unfortunate, since I like the poem it goes with so much.

I suppose everything can't be a smashing success.

Lesson learned.

The poem comes from the series I wrote while in Costa Rica last year. We had the good fortune of being able to see giant Leatherback sea turtles nesting on a beach in the middle of the night, and I was taken by the way these turtles return, year after year, to the same beach they were born on to lay their eggs. Scientists can only speculate how the turtles are able to find the exact beach; they think it might have to do with the earth's magnets, or with the way the stars sit over that particular beach, or with the taste of the beach's minerals in the sand. In any case, it's amazing stuff.

Thinking about the turtles, I wondered if that kind of return might somehow apply to humans as well.

***

Return

In the dark, by the stars
I navigate my way back to you.

I have seen a hundred oceans,
all blue and full of things
I had no names for.

But you have been calling,
sad like a gray whale’s song.

Tonight, I remember how
the Southern Cross sits
just above your horizon
and slightly to the left.

The pull of you is deep,
stronger than the tides.