New Year's Day 1/1/11

You and Art

Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.

Year after year fits over your face--
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;

And you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.

(from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems by William Stafford)






















A wolf? A coyote? A dog? From one of the Yosemite webcams on December 25, 2010.

Dear Blog Friends,

Looking forward to another fruitful year of reading your blogs and blogging! Here is where I started in 2006. My 4th blog birthday was December 8.

Kind wishes for 2011 and always,
am

P.S. At the top of this post is "Boy with Amaryllis and Orion," one of my trackpad drawings from January 2008.

Healing Thread

The Way It Is
by William Stafford

There's a thread that you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

(Appleworks paint program trackpad drawing from 2005 by am)

VOICE THAT FINDS ITS WAY

FOR MY YOUNG FRIENDS WHO ARE AFRAID
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot - air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.
- William Stafford

Many thanks to Whiskey River for this poem.

("Self-Portrait with Imaginary Brothers" painted by am in gouache and watercolor just before the First Gulf War)