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      January 20, 2022Last ReachWendell Smith

      Image: “Nature People #8” by Bruce McClain. “Last Reach” was written by Wendell Smith for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
      When I was 31 I wrote,
      “If I am a leaf upon a bough
      may the wind be strong that takes me down
      that I may have a long and giddy dance
      before I reach the ground.”
       
      Now, that I’m almost 80,
      I know, “No if about it,”
      and yearn for perfect stillness
      in bright Autumn sun
      that warms ones core as coals
      in a cast iron parlor stove
      will warm the body on a January night,
      so when I yield to gravity,
      I will sail down the air with ease
      to berth in a bed of other leaves.
       
      Lately I’ve come to hope that berth
      will be against the southern,
      weathered wall of an abandoned barn
      where I can rest roasty on bright days
      protected from the chill winds
      that come as the season bends
      around the solstice
      and one by one like leaves
      we lose our friends.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the artist, Bruce McClain

      “I selected this poem, ‘Last Reach,’ because it illustrates in word what I render in pencil, the process of life and death. ‘If I am a leaf on a bough,’ ‘and the long and giddy dance before I reach the ground’ capture, in a subtle way, what my art represents, the lessons learned and the wisdom gained through the ups and downs as life unfurls. This illustration is the first in a series of fifty which will appear in my forthcoming book, Elder Leaf.”

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