Tree Created Chores
Growing up, elms ringed the yard,
giants relinquishing summer’s shade 
knee deep to my father who raked,
mulched, and burned for weeks 
in autumn’s gloaming.
I prefer my honey locusts, a pair,
that filter sunlight with pinnate compound leaves,
their small ovoid petals 
creating shade with pointillism.
Leaf fall from a locust is dainty--
golden confetti—like rain falling
when the sun is shining.
What needs raking are the pods,
long, brown ribbons that won’t come down
until icy north winds bring serious winter.
They hang on as long as they can,
rattling like skeletons on the bony branches,
then drop to snow like lost lines
in forgotten poems.  All winter I fantasize.
 
How fresh the air, how bright the sun,
how fun the task to rake!
I’m cooped up, hungry for fresh oxygen,
and movement outdoors,
forgetting spring brings weeks 
of westward gales, warm but hearty.  
Sometimes lifting a shovel full of pods, 
the load blows back to the ground
and I must build it up again.  
Indians harvested the pods for seeds
and ground them to flour I’m told
but I’m not so adventurous 
with gastronomical unknowns
so I haul them by wheelbarrows to the ditch.
After years of doing this, I’m still waiting 
for a volunteer seedling to shoot from the debris.
If I have to rake, though, I take spring.
All ahead seems idyllic, a dream unfolding.
Only new life awaits, not thousands of small deaths.

The Far Off Hills
I
In summer, the hills are every shade
of green.  Even in winter,
their contours are colored.
 
I wonder where are those hills?
How can I get there?
 
Once I drove towards them
but cars in back hurried me.
I turned into a driveway to let them pass.
 
I discovered a woods being clear-cut.
A tractor with a long trailer
loaded with logs was parked 
amidst the destruction.
I turned around in the cemetery driveway
and went home, thinking
better to stand on my farm and look.
 
I feel small when I study
the rise and fall of land,
reaching in waves towards the horizon,
sky that goes on 
past the edges of the earth,
past the earth’s atmosphere.
past that into a universe.
My questions remain the same.
 
II.
My eyes look to the hills
beyond my field past the neighbor’s woods.
They catch my eye whenever I look there.
Rising up like a western mountain range
but here in Wisconsin, they’re glacial remains.
 
Evergreens and oaks, maples and elms,
bare spots from far off farm fields,
undulating layers of color,
changing with the hour, the season.
So far away yet so close
with a sky rising to the edges 
of the earth’s atmosphere, 
drawing me away from my farm.
 
III.
This morning I saw snow patches
in the rise of the hills,
flat places where land rests
before climbing up some more.
Up and up the rise snakes
before meeting big blue sky
going on forever
into the unseen deep.
I stand, here, at the window, 
traveling with my eyes.
I am not ready
to set out on that journey.
Already I know
when the time is right
I will have to go.
 

About the painting and poem
I painted Light Falls on Trees in 2015. I was beginning to get a glimmer of how to capture what I loved abstractly.  I was hoping the painting would convey the feeling one has when lying on a hammock or sitting on the ground under a big shade tree in the summer.  The poem, The Far Off Hills, is much older.  I first wrote it in 2007.  I'd lived on my farm since 1993 and loved that life of being in the country surrounded by nothing but landscape.  A few years ago, I revised the poem slightly, turning it into three parts instead of one long poem.  I no longer live on my farm.  I sold the farm house in 2017, a few months after my husband's death.  I still own farm land but now that is an investment rather than a life style.  As I revisited both, I pictured in my mind's eye that sweep of hills up into the sky.  Writing and painting help you remember, and since everything I create is so very personal, I'm glad I have these to bring back that memory of something I loved so much.

About the Painting
The kind of art I want to make is non-objective abstract art, but as I have discovered in my journey to become that kind of artist, it is easier said than done.  I have moved from realism to abstraction to non-objective abstract art in the twenty plus years I have been painting.  This painting which is titled Light Falls on Trees was painted in 2015 or 2016.  I had begun working with Rebecca Crowell, and she was my guide as I began a deeper plunge into abstraction.  My husband had been recently diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and my work during that time period was gestural and forceful.  I look at it now and can see how it reflected my tension and despair as his prognosis became increasingly less hopeful.  Nonetheless, one of the things and artist has to come to terms with is how their work changes.  What I painted then is not how I paint now, but it is still my art and how I came to be where I now am as an artist.

Retreating to a Get-Away Place

Trees crowd the long driveway.
At the opening, the lawn is shaggy,
ragged and a fenced garden 
grows milkweed from one wire side
to the next.  But the little house 
crouched under trees
looks neat. Curtains cover
the blank stare of windows.
A gas grill sits at the edge
of a paved patio, lawn chairs nearby.

Inside the old formica counters gleam 
but the dish drainer is piled
with mismatched dishes.
The refrigerator is new, holding beer and pop,
ketchup, mustard, sweet pickle relish, butter,
peanut butter, salad dressings and
maple syrup and two flavors of ice cream.
Beds are taut and smooth.
Clean towels hang in the bathroom.
Nothing matches and the decor 
harkens back to the sixties.

The ambition carried in with me
is already napping on the screened 
front porch’s daybed, pillows flung down 
on the blue striped cover, waiting for me.
On the flowing river, a boats whines 
its way past. Just before closing my eyes, 
a squirrel chatters from the tall leaning oak.
Before I hear the blue jay’s answer, 
the world loses focus. Leaves are fluttering
everywhere above me, sunlight dancing 
and reflecting shadows on my closing lids.
Tension released I can feel myself let go.

About this poem:  I wrote this poem when the original cabin at my current address on North Shore Drive in Eau Claire stood. I used it as a retreat between family gatherings.  The old place had a rumpled charm.  Many a poem was written there.