In twenty-twenty the pandemic killed my words and soothed me with art. Now it's twenty-twenty-one, who knows which muse will triumph?
#Tanka 53 + Two Contrasting Seasonal Paintings from 2020
Category: Art
#Tanka 52 — Dreaming of Ratatouille
Peppers and eggplants... dreaming of ratatouille. Solanaceae, a coat of many colours, some deadly, some nutritious.
Tomato — Art Meets Poetry
A couple of weeks ago, I braved moving on from sketching to do my first acrylic painting. The subject was a humble freshly picked tomato from the family allotment. The painting isn’t perfect but I’m quite proud of my effort.
Mister suggested I accompany my picture with a saucy, gently humorous free verse poem that I wrote more than two decades ago and then posted on my blog in its early days. The verses heralded from a challenge I set one winter Sunday afternoon while visiting some dear friends. This followed on from a roast dinner and an unspecified number of glasses of red wine, so all present were feeling particularly merry. It involved us each writing a poem in five minutes on a given subject, the first subject being “tomato”.
Plump tomato you remind me of Maisie on a Sunday, scrubbed clean beneath a fresh bonnet, shiny red cheeks green eyes and lace frills, smiling, basket upon arm. Maisie loves the vicar and brings him freshly picked tomatoes matching her cheeks. She smells of compost and lavender soap. He asks her for lunch after church. Their eyes meet over large tomatoes eaten whole that squelch as the juice runs down their chins. She giggles into her lace handkerchief, he wipes his chin on the tablecloth, and over the crockery they kiss, all tasting of fresh tomatoes. She giggles some more. He squeezes Maisie the plump tomato and they disappear under the table beneath newly-pressed linen. Maisie's cheeks ripen until she shines with the shiny red plumpness of ready-to-eat fruit. The vicar praises God for tomatoes and descends upon Maisie for dessert. Copyright(c)Sarah Potter, 1997
#Tanka 51 — Self-portrait (02)
Sadness, that blank page. Now to draw a happy face with magic pencil. Hark! You gloomsters and doomsters, Art wins the battle hands down.
#Tanka 49 & 50 — My Dog & I
Rewind that decade! Side by side we almost flew, chasing time and scents. Labrador sleeked through meadow, coat a-shimmer. A mirror.
Upon reflection, side by side our hearts still fly, with time the hounder. We compete for silver now, not of riches but of hair.
