Charla's space

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photo by Luke Razzell

The snow is falling again.

I watch the moorhens
floating,
drifting in the dock.

They're always there,
together,
the two of them, dancing.

First away, a gentle radius,
then close in, feathers touching.

Lives entwined,
they lead each other.

Sometimes lost, one waits:
he held by the current
she by her search for bread;

each on their separate journeys.

They join again,
always finding home, rippling the water,
chasing and moving.

The snow is still falling.

I watch you playing Beethoven.

I know my moorings are here,
with you.

Finding home, entwined,
the two of us, dancing.

subjectivity

I hear the leaves, brittle on the ground.
I feel the bark, smoothly wrapped around a core.
I watch the roots stretch, reach out.

My heart arches like that branch.
I'm moving in the sunlight, a silent dance of nature
transcending time and frames.

Charla Givans

According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as objectivity.

We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself. Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way around.

Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters

He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. This we know. The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to earth. This we know. All things are connected like blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Chief Seattle, 1894

abstract

mix paints
play
capture something with light

measure sensations
with colours

feel your way
with butterflies

that flutter in pain
in love

in sunlight, in rage, in joy.

the body speaks
in abstract tenses

mixing times,
delicate rusted palette.

growing tall

Soar
above the many veined threads
to clear sky.

Grow tall, powerful.

Tend and nourish fragile roots
that remain hidden
in your swing-set place

where innocence and love
are meant to dwell.

Do not speak of betrayal
though it has whirled around.

Do not speak of scars
though they are carved in you.

They will remain.

Empty branches repent their nakedness,
yet every spring they bud and swell with life

among awkward beauty and broken wings.

night river

Many rivers flow through us, and many rivers move us.

Light emerges from darkness.
Without a black frame,
light, however slight and nascent,
cannot reveal its power and beauty.
And so it is with life, with all night journeys.