WINGS
 
An hour before sunrise, before the sky
lifts its soft black wing, a gray fox slips
beneath the protective hem of the forest
to scuffle with a cat in the marigolds.
Their shrieks rattle the oleander, and
both scatter in opposite directions:
the cat racing to the safety of a parked
car, and the fox dashing back and
forth across the yard, his plush tail a
glorious silver plume fanning the grass.
 
In my mind I see the sliver of myself
that whirls like a satin ribbon in the wind,
dancing light as starshine, longing to fly.
 
On Thursday, my gallery in New York
calls. Peter, the friendliest of the sales
staff, sold three paintings yesterday
to a woman from Phoenix attending a
convention at Jacob Javits. The director
suggests I ship more work next week.
The needs of any gallery across the
country differ. Some require as many
as twenty of each artist’s paintings for
inventory, while others need only five.
My galleries request numerous paintings
from their artists, since all four are
located in areas rich with art collectors
and a steady flow of tourists. Each
gallery sells two or three of my pieces
monthly in a variety of sizes, from
miniatures nestled in painted frames
to large wrapped canvases measured
in feet. Soho still bustles with activity,
even though many galleries have moved
in recent years to trendier Chelsea. My
gallery on Broome may follow one day,
but for now I’m content to walk the
crowded streets of Soho whenever my
work is featured in a solo exhibition.
The atmosphere remains crisply cheerful
in this part of Manhattan, the sun
bouncing like a swallowtail butterfly
across brick warehouses converted long
ago into stylish galleries, lofts, and
specialty shops. I prefer Soho in the
winter, when street artists bundled in
heavy coats clutch steaming coffee cups
and sell handmade treasures, while
the wind swirls continuously, twisting
my redwood hair into a nest fit for wild
birds. On Prince, Wooster, Greene,
or Broadway I can stumble upon almost
anyone in a gallery: an artist friend,
a famous film actress, or even a former
President surrounded by a gaggle of
Secret Service men as tall and sturdy
as scrub pines. For me, every day on
the streets of Soho shivers with delight.
Mid-afternoon, and five crows skitter in
the grass, dragging my attention back to the
midlands of South Carolina. Among the birds
of the pinewoods, the crow remains my
favorite. Confident and immense, crows strut
in the street on the black lilies of their feet
like glossy cats, rasping sandpaper songs.
When a knot of three or more gathers, their
chorus thunders, as if they were my flock
of cats swimming around the kitchen counter,
bellowing for joy when I pop the top of a
cat food can. Now a sixth crow appears on
the roof, causing a sudden alert from the sofa.
Above, one dark body scuffs the shingles,
while three furry heads bob beneath in a sea
of quilt, their eyes wide as lemon buttons.
 
The longer I walk in the Spirit the more
personal freedom I experience, finding life
needn’t loom so difficult, forever etched
with worries and uncertainties burdening
the soul. I close my eyes and see the glow
of my Spirit, calm and carefree, as feather-
light as a meadowlark tapping the blue
sequins of a September sky. To be free
in the Spirit must be a matter of wings.

* * *
Elm, maple, and oak shadow the pinewoods
behind my home, trees ripe with the green
of late summer leaves. Green is a color
I must absorb visually from my environment,
as if to satisfy some unknown mental and
emotional requirement, like a cat lapping
sunlight from its fur to ingest Vitamin D.
The cool embrace of the color green weaves
throughout my house, inside and out, from
the sprawling gardens that lace the yard
to the seafoam carpet running from wall
to wall, a characteristic of people raised in
high places, like the Appalachians and Blue
Ridge, where vertical land rolls in evergreens
year round, this brisk union of bluebell
skies and verdant trees I have faithfully
reproduced in my home. Surely, my
career decision foretells a prophecy. One
that had to be fulfilled the moment the ruffled
colors of the mountains sweetened my blood.
 
Since ten o’clock I’ve been finishing
paintings, using a sponge wand to
varnish miniatures, and applying a liquid
to the larger canvases with a soft brush.
Next week they’ll be dry enough to
bundle in bubble-wrap and ship to New
York. Stopping to lift my weary arms and
stretch, I gaze out the window at a hedge
glazed with rain, the leaves of the red-tip
curling in tubes as if they need umbrellas
too. September drizzle trickles down
from North Carolina, while a plump squirrel
runs across the backyard, grasping half
an ear of corn in its mouth, someone’s
rejected dinner tossed in the trash and
resurrected as a feast, soon to be savored
kernel by kernel. In the spring I’ll surely
find piles of pecan shells and that empty
cob buried in one of my flowerpots.
 
By late afternoon the skies clear, and
the rattling cantata of a chainsaw grinding
its teeth on raw wood draws me back
to the window, where I see my mailbox
uprooted and sprawled in the neighbor’s
yard. A man stands in the driveway
gripping a yellow rope, as thick as my
wrist, tied to a big pine in the sideyard,
another casualty from a summer of pine
beetles, drought, and ruthless heat.
One more tug, and the tree tumbles to
the ground, exploding in a mosaic of
fractured limbs, pine cones, bark, and
brittle straw. I stand at the window
awestruck at such a shattering. The
pine, easily forty feet high, now sleeps
on the ground in a million pieces where
my mailbox once stood. Three men
with rakes and brooms sweep up the
debris and whisk it away in a truck.
But not before I am graced with this
breathtaking spectacle: nature’s ability
to create a vast abstract design in the
grass from the remains of a lifeless pine.
 
After dinner Reese snores in his reclining
chair, whistling like a fistful of crickets,
while the cats race through the kitchen,
rejoicing in full bellies. The clouds return,
and I long to lift my wings and glide like
a sparrow through the silver seeds of late
summer rain. Or slide the seesaw of the
mockingbird’s flute, as the black flowers
of the night blossom, framing the pine-
woods with dusky petals. At moments
like this I can almost believe in the lovely
wings of the Spirit. That it’s my destiny
to fly as milk-white light, to sail with the
alpha and omega of the sky. To give up
the struggle and relax into my Spirit, as
white as a cabbage butterfly or a tiger
moth flitting through dogbane. White as
a jar of gesso or the new canvas resting
on my easel. Rain clings to the window
like beads of shower-water dangling
from an eyelash, while I sit in the studio,
blending paint twirls with a palette knife,
trying to capture the color wheel of flight.