Trinity 2012 by Drea Jensen
The space that lies between objects is often just as interesting as the objects themselves,
just like the journey can be better than the destination.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/trinity-2012-drea-jensen.html

Sometimes by Mary Oliver

1.

Something came up
out of the dark.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.
It wasn’t an animal
or a flower,
unless it was both.

Something came up out of the water,
a head the size of a cat
but muddy and without ears.
I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.

2.

Sometimes
melancholy leaves me breathless.

3.

Later I was in a field full of sunflowers.
I was feeling the heat of midsummer.
I was thinking of the sweet, electric
drowse of creation,

when it began to break.

In the west, clouds gathered.
Thunderheads.
In an hour the sky was filled with them.

In an hour the sky was filled
with the sweetness of rain and the blast of lightning.
Followed by the deep bells of thunder.

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!

The lighting brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

4.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

5.

Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.

6.

God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my body

like the hands of my beloved.
Let the cathead appear again-
the smallest of your mysteries,
some wild cousin of my own blood probably-
some cousin of my own wild blood probably,
in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.

7.

Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn’t amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.

After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened

to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.

Louise Bourgeois, Lair

“The colour blue – that is my colour – and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into – not a world of fantasy, it’s not a world of fantasy – but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don’t like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue.”
― Louise Bourgeois, Louise Bourgeois: Drawings and Observations

Letting Paint Dry 2012 by Drea Jensen
Though we are constantly surrounded by magnetic energy, by looking carefully, we can find internal harmony.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/letting-paint-dry-2012-drea-jensen.html

While I Am Writing a Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing
By Mary Oliver

Sixty-seven years, oh Lord, to look at the clouds,
the trees in deep, moist summer,

daisies and morning glories
opening every morning

their small, ecstatic faces-
Or maybe I should just say

how I wish I had a voice
like the meadowlark’s,

sweet, clear, and reliably
slurring all day long

from the fencepost, or the long grass
where it lives

in a tiny but adequate grass hut
beside the mullein and the everlasting,

the faint-pink roses
that have never been improved, but come to bud

then open like little soft sighs
under the meadowlark’s whistle, its breath-praise,

its thrill-song, its anthem, its thanks, its
alleluia. Alleluia, oh Lord.

Prayer for Cameron 2013 by Drea Jensen
The ability to stay strong and see the good when things are pushing down around you can go a long way,
positivity is worth far more than some think.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/prayer-for-cameron-2013-drea-jensen.html

Opening Day

There is a prayer inside
our hearts
stitched with red thread

On opening day
your legacy lives on
Cameron Varnell

Captured in the perfect pitch
the ball thrown to the mitt
cheers from family and friends

We are on the sidelines
while you take center stage
performing
eyes bright blue
your smile alive and present

When a young man dies
our souls shatter
fragments of our former selves

Our soft animal hearts witness your souls journey
from the physical to the spiritual

Your friendship lives on
Cameron Varnell
each pitch a prayer.

~ a poem dedicated to Cameron Varnell
August 19, 2000 – April 16, 2013

Inspiration 2012 by Drea Jensen
One small stone in a pond can create a ripple as large as the pond,
just like a small idea can grow into a masterpiece.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/inspiration-2012-drea-jensen.html%5B/caption%5D

Red Bird
By Mary Oliver

Red bird came all winter
Firing up the landscape
As nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,
Those dun-colored darlings,
So hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,
I know he has many children,
Not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-
Perhaps because the winter is so long
And the sky so black-blue,

Or perhaps because the heart narrows
As often as it opens-
I am grateful

That red bird comes all winter
Firing up the landscape
As nothing else can do.

Elizabeth Bishop Red Flowers on Black

One Art
BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Imagination by Drea Jensen Art

Imagine
By Mary Oliver

I don’t care for adjectives, yet the world fills me with them.
And even beyond what I see, I imagine more.

Seeing, for example, with understanding,
or with acceptance and humility and
without understanding,
into the heart of the bristly, locked-in worm
just as it’s becoming what we call the luna,
that green tissue-winged, strange, graceful,
fluttering thing.

Will death allow such transportation of the eye?…

Well, we will all find out, each of us.
And what would we be, beyond the yardstick,
beyond supper and dollars,
if we were not filled with such wondering?

Muse of Fire 2011 By Drea Jensen
This painting represents the expression of inspiration and passion
that lives in us all.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/muse-of-fire-2011-drea-jensen.html

Invitation
by Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Lotus 2012 by Drea Jensen
Perspective can change anything. Take one step to the left, and you will see things differently than if you took a step to the right.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/lotus-2012-drea-jensen.html

Small Bodies

It is almost summer. In the pond
the pickerel leap,
and the delicate teal have brought forth
their many charming young,
and the turtle is ravenous.
It is hard sometimes, oh Lord,
to be faithful.
I am more boldly made
than the little ducks, paddling and laughing.
But not so bold
as the turtle
with his greasy mouth.
I know you know everything –
I rely on this.
Still, there are so many small bodies in the world,
for which I am afraid.

~ Mary Oliver