The Reverie

I’m have been sitting here in the studio office for over four hours now
basically avoiding the task of writing Painter’s Notes.

Yes, I have been distracted by important things…
like the glorious clear November sky
screaming its glaze of King’s Blue Deep
overtop of which the tapestry of fall oaks and maples
are positively on fire with peak season color.

Or the twenty minutes I just spent editing the photo I had to take of the praying mantis
who I discovered sunning herself on the air-conditioning unit outside of my easel window
when I walked over there to get a piece of gum.

And in between I have listened to two radio interviews by Krista Tippett
whose conversations with modern day Clerics, Mystics and Buddhist monks
often stop me in my atheist tracks
and shine a light on my own particularly flawed humanity.

So, ok focus…and I am looking once again
at this painting…and remembering.
It was a hot summer day and the bed of zinnias
which I had planted for Pat was full of flowers.
It was late enough in the season
for them to have to make way for the Black Eyed Susans
and for the garden rake to be covered over with cornflowers.

I remember that I had noticed
the day before I started the painting
that the swallowtails were spending the early morning dancing in that bed
and that the first rays of light climbing over the hill
made them seem like stained glass windows.

So I had taken some quick photos before I sat with the sketchbook.
As so often happens this was serendipitous
because when I came over the next morning
and sat waiting…and waiting…
for the sun to replicate those shafts of cathedral light
the one butterfly which I had fancied and chosen as model
returned with a broken wing.

I didn’t see it until just now
but the colors are the same
in the summer butterfly
and the autumn leaves
and both just as brilliantly alive
with the spirit…
procrastination or reverence ?