The Summons

 Sunrise Nice France,  Photo Dreamtime.com

The Summons

by Mary M Payne

I want to get up early before sunrise,

before the black birds even,

before the gendarmes patrol. 

I will tug on my clothes ,

shaking dreams aside 

and start down the empty road

to the forsaken sea.

I will watch the sky lighten by degrees

the first shards of gold, creamsicle orange, 

a fanning of pinks. 

I want to suffer again the “galets”

flat and round as dough cakes

shape-shifting under my feet, 

to hear the murmuring of old man Mediterranean 

encouraging, preaching, beckoning.

I will footmark the Covid forbidden beach

while I launch a prayer of thanks. ..

to the god of nature, to water spirits,
to trees, to bees and….yes, to people…

that rare sub-species…”the caregivers.”

I want to get up early before sunrise

before the street lights blink out,

before the merles’ tentative trills,

before the first stirrings, 

I will stealth on padded feet to the sea,

to glory in what we've never lost. 

Lockdown, Nice France

Lockdown, Nice France

by Mary M Payne
          
Early I walk on a road without cars

Daring the macadam,
no need for the sidewalk...
then home I flit beetle-like through the garden,

through lush tangles of yellow greens,

garnets and purples.

I toss smooth stones,

Fat as Parker House rolls

Into a pile, alluvial harvest
from a glacier harrowed hill.
No home for them now, 

the pile grows great,
monument to torpidity.

And now lunch, “plein air”

beneath the bay tree 

Grilled duck breast

sautéed mushrooms 

Dusky as old piano keys.

A toss of Italian plum tomatoes, then later,Clementines from Spain...

Shining torpedoes of acid sweetness.

If the virus comes, 

All will be otherwise.
but today dappled with delights,

is a colorful child's pantomime.
Tiny creatures tune their instruments 

An overture to April spills forth.

Lemon gowned butterflies shepherd us to our seats.
The lights go down. 

We wait.
          

Art in the time of Cholera

Collage by Mary M Payne

Well, I think that nothing has happened in my lifetime that compares to the pandemic and lockdown we are all experiencing today. 

  Of course the virus is real but doesn't feel real when one is healthy and safe and lives in a beautiful community in the "green zone" of France.  Yes, our department is so far the third least hit by the virus so we are a "green" designation.  

 Here in the south of France people seem to be acting normally.    There are few masks in view and many folks are out and about despite the affidavit required to leave the house and then only for an hour.  

I have been in the garden almost every day,  thrilled with this spring which seems even more lush than usual.  Is it that I am taking the time to experience this season more during the lockdown or is it true that despite little rain, all of the plants are in raptures? It may be both.  And it may be that the mature roots of our garden are deeper this year, giving some plants an underground water source. 

Just before the lockdown went into effect on March 17, I was attending an art class once a week.  In that class we had a theme presented to us to work on for about a month.   Today I am taking time out from the garden to look back on the work I produced for my class.  

The theme this time was to depict what is "infinitely large or what is infinitely small".  Since I was not inclined to take the project literally as some museum artists have done with large installations,  I decided to use the idea of the cosmos as the point of reference that was infinitely large and "talk' about our place in the vast universe.

  I wanted to try the idea of surrealist collage as a starting point.

 First I  assembled a lot of images that appealed to me.  I found most of them for free online.  The quality of the images when printed was paramount and I found that using Laser images was preferable to my own inkjet HP.   I also tried different weights of paper.   I first used photo paper but found it was too thick for my purposes and that I disliked the shiny aspect of even mat photo paper.   In fact with all the printing and with ordinary HP cartridges costing 50 euros for one cartridge , this was probably the most expensive project I have yet done for this class. 

 For paste I used ordinary white paste to adhere the print paper to 180 gram Canson and tack that onto 300 gram watercolor papers as backgrounds.    When the layers became thick I used double sided tape to adhere one to the other.  

   In every case in my series of 6,  I use the human hand as a through line thread of cohesion. 

 In the first collage here, you will see a diver about to execute a backflip.   I liked this image and put it in and then realized that for me it represented the fact that we, as humans, are for the most part "blind" to where we are going ( like the diver). We take our lives and the majesty of the universe for granted.  We frolic through our lives little realizing consequences.   So now my surreal collages are not so surreal , there is a theme. 

  I would continue to post but the font keeps changing on my attempt to post.  I have looked into it on Google forums and many have the same problem.  However, no answer is forthcoming.    Sorry.