" ... this need ..."

Denise Levertov

Of Being

I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences –
great suffering, great fear –

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

this mystery:

Two Witnesses (1984) Three Daffodils (2007)

From January of 1970 to December 8, 1970, a man I love was a helicopter mechanic for the U.S. Army in Vietnam. He was a direct witness to war, and I am an indirect witness. I don't know much of what he saw there, but when he came home I saw a look in his eyes I will not forget. 

It has been twenty-three years since I made this image using gouache, watercolor and Rembrandt pastels on Arches watercolor paper and thirty-seven years since he returned from war. 

These days I think about the men and women who are in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the friends and families who love them. These days I am grateful for the healing presence of ponds, lakes, rivers, creeks, bays, straits, mountains, foothills, day and night skies, birds, and trees. 

 I just noticed three daffodils coming up in the large planters on my porch. Last year I noticed them on January 23.