robert kelly
Beneath the sun
a swoop of iris rose gamboge
above the bay.
solar halo but the boat
girl Bailee said We
call it a sun dauber—
I thought of a child in school
somewhere very far
who with her golden
crayon shaped the sun.
—Robert Kelly
Ashley Garrett. No Exit, 2015, oil on canvas, 48 x 49 in.
Happy New Year, dear Ashley!
When the pen is loaded
the rodeo begins,
is that your horse
hopping over the hill?
Is that your wine-glass
shattered on the boulder,
your straw hat perched
on a saguaro,
how wise you are
to carry a desert
in your purse
so everywhere you go
you can at need or at will
suddenly have space,
huge space around you—
is that your slender hand
even now drawing the horizon?
—Robert Kelly
Melding Madrigal, 2018, oil on gessoed paper, 11 x 8.5 in.
MELDING MADRIGAL
from & for Ashley Garrett
The painting is as clear
as the morning daylight
it reveals the creation of,
the world of forms pouring
out of clouds,
birth of a world.
But what does the painter mean
by the words she knows the painting by?
Melding seems to be the first word
and madrigal is certainly the second.
Meld seems to be a term from poker
where all your cards in get displayed,
your power manifest,
showing your hand—
from German melden,
‘to announce, proclaim’.
But in our American ears
it sounds like melting,
reminds us of colored wax
dripping slow down the candlestick,
crayons, mixing colors,
blending.
We think it means blending.
I hear the German word, though,
and know it means
the Hidden Deity
is proclaiming the actual,
this visible world.
Madrigal is harder—
is it the strict
polyphony of creation?
All our loves and sciences
to chart, chant, cherish
the trillion voices of its structure,
and maybe colors are
the melody we hear best?
Madrigal I forms madre,
the matrix, the mother,
cosmos of all living,
the womb-song,
wild hymn of what we are.
She makes us hear it in the swirl of now.
-Robert Kelly
10 December 2018
Velamen, 2018, oil on paper, 6 x 4 in.
Children worship the sun,
think it is something to eat,
something they could eat
if they could get it out of the sky
that blue mother, who keeps
fruit and cake and sprinkles
out of our hands, children
are always hungry, we are
always hungry, we try to gorge
on music and language,
on touching each other softly
but the hunger lasts, at least
we have colors to play with,
coax them with our red mouths.
--Robert Kelly
27 January 2018
for Ashley Garrett
Kalmia Swing, 2017, oil on paper, 4 x 6 in.
KALMIA SWING (for Ashley Garrett)
she says it says it is
she heard it
broad-leafed past the meadow
when?
Edge of the forest, up the hill,
fence past the back yard
howl of those these leaves
evergreen
and these white flowers will not fade —
a swirl of music.
let it, let the colors
sort themselves out,
color is is a hand from another country
that moves the flowers,
a friend’s piece of paper,
words on it, how do they get there,
where do images come from?
The picture names them into life,
calls them a flower moving,
I answer it is Laurasia
our primal continent,
who knows
the names from which we come,
from which we grow,
she floats us midway in
ocean if air, gives
us a home, calls it land
flower music flower dance
we
race into the colors and inhabit them
make ourselves at home
So Pehr Kalm came from Sweden to explore the flowers and trees of North America, beasts and waters. He was what they called a naturalist, he named things he saw. And he saw this and we call it a laurel — not the noble laurel of the ancient Greek poets, and not the Oregon laurel girls in California pick in redwood forests to braid around their lovers’ brows. This is the the kind of laurel that back home they named after its fibder, Kalmia, broad-leafed mountain laurel.
She braids the colors
before our eyes,
wreathes them round
until the flower
starts to dance
ancient round dance of all living
,
the single act
the swing of beauty
comes with us
where we are
the only place we can live
.
---Robert Kelly