Working on a poem and maybe a painting: Mahalia's Voice / Buddha's Hands / Ayin

In the past few days, I came across this painting by Augustus Tack. I haven't been drawing or painting at all and am reminded of what is missing in my life. I remember seeing this painting years ago (maybe in in a book when I was back in college in the the 1980s, maybe when I was in Washington, D.C. in 1982) and wishing I had painted it.

For the last few months, I've been working on a poem about my childhood experience of being astonished by hearingMahalia Jackson sing on the television sometime between 1954 and 1957, and an image that came to me recently of the emptiness held in the Buddha's hands as he sits in meditation, as well as the concept of Ayin, the "experience of nothingness" (Rabbi Tirzah Firestone). I haven't written anything down, but the images and experiences continue to speak to me.