Low Horizon/Big Sky

 


Low horizon   big sky

above gold leaf skin

orange and peach contend with blue

and make dog shapes of sunset

forcing us to reimagine the horizon

as a ribbon of gold.

The attempted larceny of twilight

somewhere above a sutra of gold.

I want to eat this light, chew it

spit it into a rain made of fire

and prayer. Lost love is only

the world turned upside down

empty into Australia,

breathe blue flame & remember the pact

you made before your last birth.

 

 

Cubes of sky

over molten hills

she was dreaming of Tuscany

the mingling of hues among the folds

reminding her of ships

or  a  reassessment  of   September.

October  is  a  fugue

made of dying

leaves and the music of their rustle

a continuous rapture of change.

The ancients found that ending wasn’t final

just one more wax-shaped teardrop.

The allure of turquoise the rapture of red

a malleable landscape revealed.

 

 

After the September rain

the air is charged with odors

of impending storms upended

like a shepherd’s intention, or

the bleating of sheep.

The unseen rocky canyons

where intelligence dwells

in minerals and rills

and unconsciousness lurks like a cougar

w/ an urgent summer hunger

sharpening the senses.

In the light we have the promise of shadows

or one more lifetime in which a stolen moment

reappears in the roar of a silent hue.

 

 

A collaboration of John Olson, Roberta Olson & Paul Nelson, 6:05P – 9.12.05

 

 

Hues in mutual conflict. Can one

call this conflict?  Is conflict

conflict when the hues are so gentle

allowed to combine, invited into

this world, allowed, encouraged

to have a life of their own, as

if the very reality, the very essence

of a sky at twilight were brought

into wax, trapped in wax. But

is it trapped? It is not static.

There is a life in the peach, a

vividness in the warmth of this

creamy orange that eludes the

finality of my searching rhetoric.

What words can assume the palpability of paint, can acquire

the sensuality of wax combined

in heated pan to exude this

other life, this fugitive world

that is neither sky nor art

but a reality unique to itself.

 

John Olson

6:14PM – 9.12.05

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


This blue is a September

Monday fear the hurricane

& the message behind it

blue. Touch of indigo under

shapes the chldren reveal

as dragons  or the coming

of another dusk.  Over the

gulf, no one is sure where

the sky ends & the whitecaps

begin. No one is sure if

there is a hand shaping

these events or if it’s

simply spilled from a dipper

constellated by an ancient

wall of surprising stars.

 

Paul Nelson

6:14PM – 9.12.05

 

 

the sun chases clouds across the sky

while the land below lies cracked in its creation

there is no rain very little shadow

the clouds make moons of themselves

reflecting  the  suns  bent  rays

there  are  dogs  that  run  in  air  

or continents     culled from a

feeling  of  warmth    the  darkness

will  drip  and  comb the clouds into

memories   of light    a night

 

 

Roberta Olson

6:14PM – 9.12.05