​Mourning Doves in the Squash Garden
 
I want to make modern people 
move about as if they were on the 
Parthenon frieze…”  Georges Seurat
 
The pair looks like Parisian ladies 
as Seurat painted them in "La Grande Jatte,"
where ladies stroll and sit, children walk and run, 
and men loll on the ground like statues.
A sunny moment dappled by shadows
at the resort next to the Seine.
 
Two doves, wandering down rows,
derrieres like skiffs being towed 
behind puffed chests, patrol for seeds
the dry dusty ground between vegetable rows.
When I appear, they retreat 
to the leaf canopy under the squashes.
Squash leaves big as dinner plates
cool and shade the ground, making it seem
like the French park in Seurat's painting. 
 
Later the doves will coo from the locust tree,
flutter down to spilled sunflower seeds 
under the feeder, but when I surprise them, 
they are strolling serenely. 
I remember Seurat, and freeze the scene
in my memory.

About the Painting and Poem
Maybe it helps to visualize warmer days ahead as we trudge through the last part of winter in Wisconsin. We've got weeks yet to get through and even though I'm through with winter, I know it's not through with me (or you either). I have had to learn how to garden differently here.  When I wrote this poem, I was still on my farm, and my gardens were veritable gardens of Eden. The effort of gardening was minimal.  Drop seeds in the ground and they grew.  The squash patch was a jungle.  There was always a pair of mourning doves hanging around the farm. I don't know if they were the same pair year after year, but I loved the sound of their coos from the trees. Their calls made audible the tranquility and happiness of those days when I lived a sweet life with my husband Jerry.  Doves are here on the river too.  The last couple of years I've had a pair cooing from my trees and reminding me that life though different can still be sweet.  But on the farm with Jerry, I thought  our life would just go on and on like it was, settled, serene, and full of small sweet things like mourning doves reminding me of George Seurat's painting.

​Sleepless Under a Wolf Moon

​by Candace Hennekens

No howling wolves lamenting hunger
but I awaken anyway, the hour early, 
one hour past midnight. I am often pulled 
from deep sleep after midnight 
by an invisible hand. Now begins fruitless search 
for sleep’s return. Tossing and turning, 
flopping over to the bed’s other side 
until giving up, walking to the den,
the room where I watch TV, sew, 
and frequently find solace during early
morning hours when the world, but not I, sleeps.
I like this room best in the night, looking over 
my backyard full of mature trees—oaks, 
silver maples—their long branches reaching 
high into the sky. The moon’s cold white light 
is reflected back by clouds and up by snow 
so that earth is almost as bright as day, 
making the branches seem like my arms and hands 
when I reach for the sky during Tai Chi. 
I wonder what it would be like to shimmy up the big oak
just past the window, climb its branches,
and reach for a moon beam where I could swing
back and forth exalting in luminescence and peace, 
my version of a jungle without tropical heat.
But the moon seems to tell me I can’t enter
its private rendezvous with trees.
Now you must sleep, it whispers, and so 
I fluff a pillow, stretch out with a blanket, 
gaze one more time at the sweet beckoning light 
then close my eyes and journey to slumber’s
darkness to swing from dream to dream.

Peace Chime

Black squirrel perched on a rock 
eats freshly fallen acorns from under the oak.  
Freshly fallen acorns feed a black squirrel. 
A chime hanging in the oak’s branches rings.
A chime rings in the light breeze.
Inside the house, I look out the window.
I have paused to admire the backyard, 
resplendent in late summer beauty: 
trees heavy with greenery,
emerald lawn, looking like a peaceful park.
I’m not intruding on the squirrel.  
Its back is to me, unaware of my watching eyes.  
I am standing still like the squirrel.
Just the squirrel and I now exist together,  
sharing this moment, hearing a chime,
the softest ringing of bells 
moving molecules gently like butterfly wings, 
existing together under a bowl of blue 
and green leaf upon a plain of grassy peace.
Squirrel under the oak and I inside the house.
Squirrel has forgotten to pay attention
while I am fully aware.
I am not intruding; squirrel doesn’t see me. 
We are creatures ringing peace.

About the painting and poem
The painting is older but one of my favorites. I wanted to convey a mood of peace in this Japanese temple.  I love blue hydrangeas and getting the flowers and leaves right was quite a challenge.  The path has texture to it.  The poem has been written in the last year or so. I've lost all sense of time since the pandemic year of isolation.  All I can say is that I've written it since I moved here.  Ironically I never had squirrels when I lived on the farm.  There was nothing for them to eat.  Yet here I have many, and in all the colors:  gray, black, white, red, and once I spotted a black squirrel with a white tip on its tail.  They are as endlessly entertaining as my birds. I'm always surprised when visitors remark about the white squirrels.  I'm so used to seeing them I forget they are somewhat of a novelty.This year they didn't even wait for the acorns to fall.  They harvested them while they were still on the oak trees.  Within two weeks, the acorns were eaten or buried so I haven't heard the sound of falling acorns this year.

My Front Yard

The lawn glistens
from a light glazing of frost.
Leaves from elm and locust
fall silently, 
taking with them
their magnificent flames
that lighted the yard like torches,
one mustard yellow, 
the other golden brown.
Dropping in bunches
making no sound, 
undressing stealthily,
to leave behind naked branches
welcoming winter.
My trees do not shiver,
but dance in coal hard winds.

About the painting and poem
Older painting and poem. The yard on the farm inspired autumn poetry, but here on the river I don't feel the same urge to write about trees in autumn.  Here it is trees in winter. The river anytime of year.. I don't know about you, but I am all eyes and nose in the fall.  It seems like color and smell are clarified by colder temperatures. When I drove in the country yesterday, it seemed that leaves are more muted this year but still beautiful. How lucky I am, I thought, as I wended my way to Aldis on the back roads that I can do that—drive back roads to get my groceries. When I was young, I yearned to be in the city.  Now that I am growing old, I yearn only for nature, for its peace, for its beauty, for its quiet.
​

Elms

In memory, it is their greenness,
neighbor brushing up to neighbor,
a cloak of saw-toothed leaves
draped over yards, arching 
over streets, forming a tunnel.
When disease hit, my father fought back,
hiring a forester who fed drugs
through long plastic tubes.
Even as my father lay dying,
tubing to his veins,
elms drank from their buckets.
One by one, my mother had them felled.

In my own yard, one elm has lived
despite a limb lost in a storm.
Every spring the tree renews itself.
On one side, two honey locusts,
on the other, a pair of spruces.
I have discovered that in autumn,
elm leaves turn yellow as a torch,
shimmering, dancing, stars performing.
Its neighbors know nothing 
of maples and oaks, 
sumacs and burning bushes, 
letting the elm bring in autumn
until wind pulls away the leaves,
which fall to the ground, 
becoming the color of earth.

About the painting and poem
Sumacs seem beautiful to me, though often overlooked and overshadowed by maples with their bright cloaks and oaks with their brass and bronze. I remember this piece of art with fondness. I selected it because sumacs are mentioned in the poem, even though the poem is about elms. To make this piece I used an actual sumac leaf and glued it onto a painted and stamped piece of white muslin.  Sumacs interest me because they are more of a weedy bush than a tree, yet every fall they change colors and create roadside beauty.  They grow in ditches, on the edge of woods.  Nothing says autumn to me more than a sumac wearing its colorful leaves.

​The Last Dance

Corn cobs, 
kernels hard and dented,  
fall like downed pins 
at a bowling alley,
and hang from flaxen stalks.
The stalk’s dry leaves hum
like a mouth organ
whenever breezes blow.

When winds blow harder,
the whole plant dances,
stalks bending across 
the farmer’s orderly rows 
to reach and rub against neighbors. 

Now the field sounds like a rushing river.
From tassal tops to gnarly roots, 
corn stalks shake and rattle, 
all ears listening for the combine. 

About the painting and poem
The painting dates from 2006 and the poem some time in that era as well, from my farm days that gave me so much poetic fodder and inspiration.  Today is hot, humid and windy, not feeling like autumn but not feeling exactly like summer either, more like its last hot breath.  By Wednesday (today is Sunday) it will be cooler and autumn will be in the air.  I love the autumn season.  Like spring, it makes me feel energized and alive.  I always paint a lot in autumn.  I say , "Bring it on!"

Monopoly Building
 
Five giants in the front yard--
two honey locusts, two Norwegian Spruce, and an elm.
 
The elm, split one summer in a hard storm,
is able still to shade in summer, hold bird feeders,
flame up to gold in autumn, 
bend with north wind in winter,
show promise of season change.
 
The honey locusts, lacy leaves imprinting an intricate design
on the sky, are perfectly spaced
for the hammock.  To swing beneath them,
is like being in paradise, going back to a time,
when life could be slowed to enjoy
just being alive on a day when sky is blue 
and warmth in season.
When flowering, the hum of bees
is audible, then brown pods form,
hanging like ornaments on a holiday tree
put up too early, then forgotten.
 
The two spruce trees house bird nests
and singing perches for many different species
identifiable only by song.
In spring, cones rain down gently,
showing the maternal urge to give life
continues another year.
 
Whenever life gets out of balance,
material concerns, politics, human strife 
too great, I walk down the road and look in.
The two-story farm house is not small,
but under the trees, it looks like a tiny Monopoly building,
proportioning down the manmade world,
amplifying nature and its simple goodness.
 
About the painting and poem
Not a painting but a collage.  For awhile, I made collages and it was simply sheer joy to combine disparate elements into a whole.  I don't have many of those works in my archives because they were very popular in my hay barn gallery, but I hung on to this one because I liked its impish joy.  It has been in several juried shows as well.

The poem harkens back to when I lived on the farm.  I truly loved living there and felt so in touch with nature and its elements.  But I find the same to be true here.  I love everything about this place as much as I loved everything about the old place.  This I believe is one of the secrets to happiness:  love what you have!  Every place, every phase of life has something unique and special about it.  If a person focuses on what they have, feels grateful for everything in their life, it is so easy to feel the joy of living and breathing in this knock-down beautiful world.
 
 

​Order, Order on the Plate
 
Corn is orderly,
the way it’s planted, 
the way it grows,
in rows 
with rows of kernels,
like linebackers
standing in nickel defense.
When eating corn,
move it back and forth
like a typewriter carriage 
or round and round
like a twirling top.
Compare corn to peas,
round and rolling,
ready to travel 
rolling, rolling, 
round your plate.

About the painting and poem
This is one of my abstracts where I  was channelling an image.  In this case, it was farm fields.  There's fences, tractors, crops, sun, snow in there.  If I hadn't told you that, you probably wouldn't deduce that, and that's okay.  The important thing was for me to get it to work visually in terms of design, and I was happy with the end product.  The poem is a nonsense poem.  I felt like I needed to post something light because of this week's grim news.  The rise in Covid cases is alarming, especially as children head back to school. Two more people died in Eau Claire County bringing our death toll to 112.  And even more alarming is the United Nations Report on climate change.  Basically we are past the point where we can undo the climate change that has already happened and if we don't take real action immediately, the planet's climate will be catastrophic.  To me it seems catastrophic enough:  fires here in the U.S., Canada, Turkey, Greece, Algeria to name some of them due to drought conditions; extreme heat here and in Europe (Italy hit a  high temperature never before recorded); species disappearing; more hurricanes.  I needn't go on.  I think of my grandchildren Eleanor, Marguerite, Francis, Oscar, August, and Lydia.  What kind of world will they inherit?  We need cooperation and innovation instead of self-interest and sticking with oil to solve this.  It's bigger than you or me.  All world leaders need to decide they are going to take action to stop the planet's degradation.