After posting in my blog today, about my favorite flower here in Costa Rica, this poem found me, literally, so I am taking it as my "muse" for the start of some wonderful paintings, of poetry, handwriting & calligraphic marks and inspiration...while they are in bloom...so cool when this happens to me. (with Lise's blessings) Listening to my intuition and experimenting. I have done some paintings of the Angel Trumpet before, but now taking it further into its intoxication.
Cloud Forest
by Lise Goett (friend I met at the artist colony last year)
The brugmansia’s slender, fluted bells proffer their deadly champagne,
their alluring, toxic flowers dangling as if they’d been gassed—
angel’s trumpet they’re called—as deadly as the single carbon
bound to oxygen you inhale, motor running. An acre of trees
for each ton of carbon load is packed up these Costa Rican steeps
by human hand, the forest canopy a lung.
You are carbon after all and to dust you shall return.
You are tired of the news, each day another hemorrhagic
wound: the drilling day, the trigger point, unctuous
plumes unfurling a Medusa’s head, a toxic gumbo spilling into dread.
On the path, by moonlight, just like you,
the ants are dismantling the jungle, leaf by leaf,
dragging it to their fire hill. Who would will their nature
or yours—your farm-fed fish, your terrerian gavage—
other than it is? They’ve been here since the start of time,
boring holes through leaves no one read.
Genius of the lazar house, petite ame bleue, how long
will your species live, the earth a spinning lazaretto?
The fleshlike bells proffer their perfume.
You are of them—their syrups of forgetfulness,
their gummy shades of night. How long will it take
to remake you, your soul no longer made of lead?
You held the handkerchief as the world danced to its demise.
The owl asks, “Who?’ You knew the answer once.
