Garden Runes

by RC DeWinter

Title

Garden Runes

Artist

RC DeWinter

Medium

Painting - Digital Oils-paintography

Description

This painting & the accompanying poem have been published in the July 2015 issue of "Garden Tripod." http://issuu.com/gardentripod/docs/garden_tripod_33

Copyright 2015 RC deWinter ~ All Rights Reserved

Revelation in a Faux Japanese Garden

On a summer's day in an unfamiliar yard in an unfamiliar town,
having been dragged there by well-meaning friends,
I sat, a little apart physically
but light-years away mentally from the company.
There was a dull, decorous picnic in progress;
I was bored.
There was nothing I could add to any conversation,
living, as I do, outside the purview
of the well-fed, prosperous world
of those burghers in attendance.

No one noticed as I slipped away
to escape the chatter.
There was a garden - rather, there were
several gardens of various configurations -
surrounding the house;
there, at least I could lose myself
in the solace of nature, with no
background static of meaningless
anecdotes, stale jokes and tedious tales
of townsfolk unknown to me.

I wandered through roses and around
a sturdy enclosure planted thick
with crucifers and root vegetables.
Rounding a corner past the fence,
I found myself in a little wood;
there were various lanterns of a vaguely
Oriental design
scattered under the low-hanging branches
of small exotic pines and flowering shrubs
as well as a slat-backed bench,
set there, I suppose, to encourage meditation.

I took advantage of the bench
and sat, trying to look past the lanterns
and the stones arranged around them;
they were so patently an artifice
interfering with the simplicity of the wood.
A catbird flicked in and out of the shrubbery;
cabbage butterflies and the occasional dragonfly
flitted among the blossomed branches.
I could not hear any voices.
I was content.

A squirrel startled me as it leapt
from underneath one of the pines,
and as it skittered off I noticed
it had been hiding among the remains
of a tree no longer in residence;
only a small semi-hollow stump remained,
surrounded by flashings of bark
left behind after its felling.
Somehow I felt there might be a message
there for me.

I knelt in the earth, studying the arrangement
of the tree's remains, forcing all thoughts
of anything but what I saw before me from my mind.
I closed my eyes; the vision of the bark
surrounded by starlike flowers imprinted in memory.
As if caught in a kaleidoscope the shapes shifted,
each turn a new version of what was left
after the culling of that tiny corner of the universe.
And what I saw was beautiful, and that was the message:
what remains after devastation can yet be cherished.
~ copyright 2015 RC deWinter

This painting has been FEATURED in
All Natural Beauty Of This World
ART - It Is Good For You
Arts Fantastic World
Artwork Manipulated
First Friday Gallery
Images That Excite You
Thanks to the group hosts for their encouragement and support.

plants, garden, stump, summer, detail, nature, outdoors, pines, flowers, branches, shrubs, tree stump, bark, wall art, rc dewinter, dewinter
Images That Excite You

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July 14th, 2015

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