If a stone could speak, without mouth, without tongue, what would it say? Would it intone the obvious? I am stone, I am rock, I am granite, Rose Quartz.
Would it speak of it's qualities? I am stone-blind, stone-deaf, a mere stone's throw, the rock of ages. Would it regale us with its origins? I trace my history to prehistoric times when I meant "stiffness" or "solidity". Would it recriminate us for not recognizing its beauty? Would it say "I am beautiful," "I am igneous, solid fire, potential fluid motion."
Speak to me, stone, tell me your flow and history, fluidity and faults, describe your habits and habitat, that I may know you.
Cicada
I think I'll go out like a light with a dimmer on it or a Fade in the movies. I probably won't go just like that. I'll inch towards death, first the big toe, then (with a sharp indrawing of breath - zsiis) up to my ankles. I've already started by moving just a little bit slower. Maybe I'll move out of step for awhile, spend time at the gym, lose weight, drink protein shakes and bound up stairs. I don't much wonder about me, I'll dim down bit by bit. I might even be found, eventually, taking a century or two to cross the street, eating lunch until 2, viewing the young through a porthole only I am aware of (appetites dulling, fading, fading). One day they'll find just my shell. I'll have moved wholly out of it.
Truth
Sometimes I feel as if I offer my truth tentatively, holding it forth with just a small gleam showing through my fingers
And the one to whom I proffer this light rejects it. And I return it to the box, waiting for the perfect match.
Sometimes I actually blurt it out, marching in an array of kindred folk only to find when the march is over I put on the same old cloak and steal away.
Sometimes I put it in a poem and they say, "that’s nice" but I can tell I haven’t reached them.
Or in a painting and they don’t buy it or don’t accept it in the show or they say, "you like Southwest art, don’t you?"
And my truth doesn’t get enough oxygen (or whatever it is that truth needs to get strong) and wanes, grows pale.
So when you offer your truth, when you put it out elegantly and someone listens, and I see in it something that matches mine, the small gleam burns brighter, burns and burns.
Pamela Coulter Blehert is primarily an oil painter, primarily in oil and acrylics. She has over three-hundreed paintings in private collections and three in corporate/government collections. Pamela has received many top awards in local shows. Some of her paintings were featured in American Artist magazine (Feb. ’95) and some of her acrylic paintings) were included in the North Light Book of Acrylic Painting Techniques.Until it closed in 1997, Pamela was represented by Venable-Neslage Galleries in Washington, D.C.In 1998, she had a painting accepted for display in the National Art Club in New York City. She participates regularly in Art League shows at the Torpedo Factory as well as League of Reston Artist shows. She is currently looking for gallery representation.
An illustrator and cartoonist as well as oil painter, Pamela also worked until July 2004 as a technical writer and computer graphics artist for a local MD company. She still conducts an oil/acrylic workshops at the Reston Community Center. Pamela will do commissions and portraits from photos and sittings. Samples of Pamela’s paintings and poems can be seen (and heard) on her website at www.blehert.com.
Although Pamela Coulter Blehert considers herself primarily a painter, she has had poems accepted by Minimus, Tres di-verse-city (Austin international poetry festival anthology), Potomac Review (Spring 2003), the California Quarterly, and sundry other magazines. Pamela read at the Austin International Poetry Festival as a guest poet, at Iota, and at various other small local venues.
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