Historical and Literary Fiction / Essays / Poetry / Reviews /Book Cover and Interior Illustrations / Pet Portraits and Other Commissioned Artwork … "Prose may be the lowest order of the rhythmic composition, but we know it is capable of such purity, sweetness, strength, elasticity, as entitle it to a place as a sister art with poetry." Thomas Hall Caine (1853 -1931) from his firsthand "Reflections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti"
The first greens acknowledge the heat and darken their thoughts, perhaps why the chestnut trees lift candles and the sky scatters blue with clouds to float upon a not yet summer’s day. The oaks no longer hesitate, irises put out their flags, and the roadsides close in honey suckled dry with false phlox sweetly coloring the days and scenting the evenings.
And all the while, birds go on recreating themselves, like everything untamed, breaking through.
The old ink bottle did quite well for holding thoughts that randomly put a bouquet on the windowsill and memory on some passing page of windflowers from filtered woods, kingcups from the water’s side–while spotted lungwort, first buds of buttercup, and also bird’s eye forget-me-nots found me lost in my garden, as if unaware that I let them grow there.
Sunday (5/13) is Mother’s Day in the US, and with deep love and devoted admiration for my mom who at 83 is as vibrant and beautiful as ever, I would like to share some paintings from her journal entitled ‘June’s Favorite Prose and Poems and Wit. Truth–Goodness–Beauty’, 1985.
Here is a poem she included in the journal, by one of her favorite poets (and mine too)…
The days are clear
day after day
when April’s here
that leads to May,
and June
must follow soon.
Stay, June, Stay!
If we could stop
the moon and June.
The Blue Flag Iris is Québec’s Provincial Flower. a spring flower that grows all over the Canadian province. In the background is the cross atop Mount Royal in Montreal.
Still I believe you knew what I knew.
The view from the bridge was a beautiful morning, lifting a city into a mountain of green and the sunlight of God. I floated across the river on my way to where you were waiting to say hello and goodbye.
Had I lost you where I found you, the cross on the mountain a prayer into the sky never heard except by those who needed it?
I almost didn’t see the traffic stopping, the memory still in my eyes so I wasn’t looking ahead. No damage was done and without taking my eyes off the road again, I followed your directions and found my way.
It wasn’t a detour through Chinatown and a few more moments with you tuning the instrument of your heart to play with the attention of mine. Just a quick bypass of reality, between us an early lunch of Vietnamese chicken and too many years since my youth, our conversation reassuring and ridiculous, though you probably didn’t realize how I felt. Or if you did, you were kind enough to let me be fooled. And linger.
As long as you were speaking of love and doubts, long after lunch was finished and the weekend lost forever. Until it was too late to delay any longer, leaving you leaving me.
©Artwork and writing, unless otherwise indicated, are the property of Diane M Denton. Please request permission to reproduce or post elsewhere with a link back to bardessdmdenton. Thank you.
bardessdmdenton - author- artist 