I imagine that most people would find catkins as something to avoid because of allergies. But I think the are beautiful in their own way. Like delicate jewels hanging from the branches, waiting for the wind to help them let go and scatter to do what they were made for.
In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
I have had this image for several years in my drawer and it has already inspired previous work. In 2016 I created an outdoor hanging book art piece for “Artists in Dialogue with the Land” at Adkins Arboretum. It might have been one of my first times creating works in the woods there. The bottom “page” was based on this same image. The book was called “A Sense of Place” and I made stitched pages based on the trees and plants at the arboretum. Some more abstract than others.
I enjoy revisiting the same images through the years. Some trees have become like old close friends because I have worked with their images over and over again. Creation is such an intimate process. You can’t help but connect to what is front of you and what your hands and eyes and whatever you want to call the inner force touches.