BRANDYWINE CREEK — C. Griffin, ’91
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[with 3 poems by Gail Peck]
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Still Life with Birds’ Nests
++ after van Gogh, 1885
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the possibility
++ of life, those eggs
blue and cream – one
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so dark it’s almost invisible,
++ two nests close together,
another propped
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on a branch –
++ no wings, nothing
fluttering in or out
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with straw
++ in beak
determined to make
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what will hold –
++ see how
the light is braided
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in straw, debris –
++ to pluck a strand
from the whole
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seemingly easy
++ at least from
the outer edge, but
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not the center
++ where eggs lie
until
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the first
++ fissure, then
the struggle,
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who will survive,
++ breaking silence
into refrain
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Gail Peck
from The Braided Light, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, Charlotte NC; © 2015. Winner of the 2014 Lena Shull Book Contest of the North Carolina Poetry Society
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I find it in the back bedroom against the back wall of the closet, other cartons piled against it. The cardboard of two boxes has been sliced apart and refolded to fit, about 26 inches by 32 inches by 4, still taped solidly together from their final move, Delaware back to Winston-Salem in 2012. Across the narrow top in black marker, “Brandywine Creek.” My mother’s printing.
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In 1949, Clara Jean “Cookie” Cooke carried her bachelor’s degree in art from Women’s College of the University of North Carolina back home to Winston-Salem to take a job in medical illustration at Bowman Gray Hospital. A year later she married Wilson, alias Dad, and moved to Atlanta, to live in student housing at Georgia Tech. About three years after that my parents moved to Niagara Falls, New York, just in time for me to be born. In the decades that followed Mom never entirely laid aside the brush – the oil she painted of my little brother at age two is a great likeness. But how often does art get stacked in a back closet behind being housekeeper, Mom, chauffeur, even later Kindergarten teacher?
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When we three kids were fully fledged and Dad finally retired, Mom re-committed herself to linseed oil and pigment. Her home and then ours as well gradually filled with landscapes and still lifes from her workshops and classes. Then began her magnum opus: portraits. She painted from life (I posed as Jesus) and she’d sort through to pick out her favorite photos to transform into paintings. Year by year the five grandkids were memorialized at all ages and activities. In her 80’s, Mom pivoted again. Now she was capturing on canvas every dog and cat of every friend and neighbor and giving them all away. Hoping for ice cream when we visited, we would more likely open the freezer to discover a palette wrapped in wax paper awaiting her next project.
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The last year of her life, Mom required more nudging to pick up a pen or pastels. If I placed a photo in front of her of something she loved, dogs especially, along with paper and a few colored pencils, she would make art. For what would be Mom’s last birthday, my sister arranged a family afternoon with an art instructor who had us all paint the same scene, two of the great-granddogs. We never laughed or enjoyed ourselves so much.
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Six month’s after Mom’s memorial service, I’m cleaning out the townhouse when I unearth the carton. I peel off the old tape, tearing some of the packing paper as I lift out its contents. The large framed canvas is not one I remember seeing before, but I remember Mom’s brainstorm when we visited them in Delaware that we should all go tubing together down the Brandywine. There’s no water in this painting, though, only rolling hills of wind-blown grass in every color and tall lithe trees whose branches catch the breeze. Brandywine Creek chuckles and rills outside my line of sight.
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So much has passed, now, beyond my vision. I wonder if I am losing, have lost, those many images I took for granted all those years. Her teasing and laughter, her quickness at crosswords and puzzles, her patient smile. Her gratitude. Especially her hand, poised, its skill, the slender fingers that wafted the magic of color so lightly across this surface I am now holding to the light. Look, just look at those brush strokes.
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Bowl with Potatoes
++ after Van Gogh, 1888
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A yellow bowl filled
with potatoes, hues
of pink and blue making
them not so ordinary.
Waiting to be sautéed
to accompany the fricassee
of rabbit simmering with white
wine, herbs, pearl onions.
I peel potatoes, cut around
each eye with a sharp knife.
Olive oil, first pressing, and local
wine to drink. A task to make
us happy, to cheer
from the lingering fog,
where we can’t even see the deck.
I seem to be braiding worries,
and have carried this day
like a heavy stone. The best
cloth and napkins, and a centerpiece
of yellow roses, smell that bring some memory
from childhood, but what? Running
near the house, getting snagged
by thorns. I try to push sadness away,
yet the candle flickers
each loss, and I worry that
one day my husband won’t
recognize my face, mistake
the pattern on the china for food,
the way his father did, fork
scrapping against the plate,
and only my chair with a view.
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Gail Peck
from The Braided Light, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, Charlotte NC; © 2015. Winner of the 2014 Lena Shull Book Contest of the North Carolina Poetry Society
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Art conjures its mysteries and we don’t spy the hand moving in shadow. A piano chord major to minor and the sun passes behind a cloud. Tangles of color on canvas blend into a fond memory of childhood. Our senses know more than we do. The smell of old perfume upon opening a closet. There we are, transported.
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And what about the art of words? Isn’t each meaning distinct, circumscribed, listed for us in the lexicon? And yet the words’ unspoken histories conjure mystery when we read in them a new tangle, a new melody, a new canvas. Nevertheless, the poet has set herself a difficult and arcane magic when she undertakes to recreate the vision of color on canvas in print. Gail Peck accomplishes this in The Braided Light, an entire volume that captures, line upon line and page upon page, the impressionistic imagery of Van Gogh and Monet.
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Perhaps the impressionist painters imagined they would not make us see but allow us to see. The light is ever changing; the colors in our minds arise from emotion and perception, not lines on a spectrograph. In the same way Gail’s poetry shows rather than tells. Her heart is tangled in the brush strokes and colors, but she opens space for my heart fall into the imagery as well. One might think there are only a finite number of meanings for a word and only a finite number of words for a color. Our senses, however, know more than we do. Look, just look at those brush strokes.
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The Braided Light by Gail Peck was the winner of the 2014 Lena Shull Poetry Manuscript Contest of the North Carolina Poetry Society, and is available online from Main Street Rag Bookstore.
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NEXT WEEK: Gail Peck’s new book from Finishing Line Press, In the Shadow of Beauty
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Weeping Willow
++ after Monet, 1918-1919
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Whatever your sorrow is
++ is yours alone.
++ ++ Tall lithe figure
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swaying darkness, what
++ have the years
++ ++ brought except
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silver among green leaves
++ trailing the bank.
++ ++ You can’t turn away.
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You stand rooted
++ in faith that rain
++ ++ will come, wash
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away debris, that the sun
++ will glint through
++ ++ what wind hasn’t
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severed. Part of me
++ longs to enter
++ ++ your canopy,
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lie beneath your shade,
++ but the ground
++ ++ is damp and grass
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won’t grow there.
++ View from my window –
++ ++ my black-shuttered house.
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Gail Peck
from The Braided Light, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, Charlotte NC; © 2015. Winner of the 2014 Lena Shull Book Contest of the North Carolina Poetry Society
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Lovely, uplifting for this cat lover.