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Pulling From the Mist, What Creating Art Is About

*** Pulled from the Mist *
   What Creating Art Is About*

(For Debbie Harding)

She gasped with an awe of nature,
Walking on a lone trail 
   to its end in the dense

Forest — a so very painted enchantment with 
A fresh white lace of snowfall covering all, which

No other human eyes had yet seen.
Life poised apart, 
    within the treasuring of itself.

“Someone of unknown fame once said,
‘You must take something out of the mist, 
    but then put it back in,’” 
   she said,

Lifting a pastel to flash over
Her paper some lines of pines, a cherry tree, and 

Naked beeches showing off, 
  Very with castle-high branches 
Shinning,iced cold.

Back in her studio, her perceptions and 
Her talent flew, pulling colored spaces 
  out of white paper…

Forms of shadows and lights; 
   tones laid down musically, like
Birds singing and, too, 
    a gurgling river nearby where deer

On tiptoe, bend to nuzzle aside snow-
Covered leaves to find 
    bites of sheltered, green grass; 

Plus the changing, cast shadows of wind-
Sailing clouds; the varying hues of 

Every moving related to every other,
As colors alter others, closer or farther.

 She’d pulled mystery from the mist.
Inspiring (beyond words) her pastels

To bring layers of the all-created out into sight,
Then put them back
 by living into her painting — 
    stroke 
by stroke, hint upon hint

Of her exuberance layered with her humility,
There in those hours of 
    exploration in that 

Forest in its levels of offering — a
Metaphorical mist. (Do consider)

The dusk’s first twinkle of Venus, 
   which perhaps,
No one sees…
The last knelling of a bell
Beyond human hearing…
The deepest beauty across the Earth…
The highest splendor in the heavens…

Such are wonders God alone keeps:

Puzzle Pieces
   scattered in the mist…
Clues to Nature — dispersed —
   In a coded map, unassembled, 
Pieces blown about everywhere.

Just as…there! A tree is 
   falling in the forest
About to land …covering one of them.

———————————————————————————————
(c) sally young eslinger 2/18/22
Glory be to God

Copyright © Sally Eslinger

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