by Millie Royce

 A Painting Lesson

He said, "There is no sudden way
to mastery. Training the eye and hand
and heart takes time, and willingness
to risk mistakes that lead to
gradual understanding."

Then he smiled.
"There's nothing really wrong that
you can do except not working at it
day by day - - Looking deep into the lights
and shapes and shadows of the world,
laying out your colors, taking up
the brush, giving yourself to
the shameless white of the paper."

The Limits of String

Having escaped the clutch of hands,
grip of gravity
this cluster of balloons has
soared through wind and sleet to
the top of  the leafless tree outside my window.

There, caught by the their tangled strings,
for a week, still plump and faintly glossy,
they twist and tug, bouncing and amazing
leaping in the freezing cold, red and purple,
blue against green. (Only one has shrunk,
shriveled, and follows limply the mad, shuddering dance.)

Today they seem to be frantic for release,
struggling to rise to their full potential, longing
to be flung upward by their terrible inner lightness
into a vast oblivion.

But perhaps
their constant motion be instead an
ecstatic dance in praise of the limits of string,
An expression, gratitude for
the strength of their tether that holds them
close together while they wait
for the green scent of budding trees,
for the songs of passing birds; now,
simply glad to be high enough to
catch the silver sheen of winter rain,
and the first cold light of the rising sun.

-- Millie Royce

(witnessed from a fourth floor apartment window in Manhattan, January 2000)
 

Inspired by
The Bhagavad Gita
2:38-40

"Be in Peace
in pleasure and pain,
in gain and in loss
in victory or in
the loss of battle.

In this Peace
there is no sin.

This is the wisdom
of Sankya -
the vision of
the eternal.

Hear now
the wisdom of yoga,
Path of the Eternal
and freedom
from bondage.

No step is lost
on this path,
and no dangers
are found.

And even
a little progress
is freedom
from fear."

-- Millie Royce