Tag Archives: Bob’s Sculpture

And Owl Moved to Some Other Tree

7 Replies

I’ve been trying to find a place for this hardwood carving of my husband’s for 19 years! It just didn’t go in the doggie domain. It needed its own space. A couple of months ago, I went over the dark wood with a white wash, then painted and wiped or sanded off the claws, eyes and letters. I wanted it to look weathered and friendlier than the rich dark wood had looked. Then it sat in my studio. A month later, I drilled and screwed in screws and wire on the back to hang it from. But where to hang it? The pistachio tree next to my hammock already had a Soleri bell and a little painting of a prehispanic figure in the knothole. (Thanks, Jesus Lopez Vega.) Then as I was walking up to the house, I pulled at the trunk of one of the really tall palms and the wood just gave way in my hands. I peeled off a few of the leaf shafts still clinging to the tree and voila! A space just right for the carving. Today I found a big nail and hung it, sorta tucking it in to the frond shafts. Perfect. With the color, it sorta blends into the tree, but as you get closer, you can read the message, “And Owl Moved to Some Other Tree.” R.I.P. Bob. I hope you are watching.

Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.

 

You can probably see it now, but can you read what it says?

 

For Sunday Trees 445

You Have Become the Art You Lived For

20 Replies

You Have Become the Art You Lived For

The caustic smell of metal in your sweat
that by the end could fill the room,
as though the bronzes you had formed
had now invaded you
and filled you, blood and fiber.
Art can’t hurt you,
declared your favorite T-shirt,
colorful and now the final irony
of your life.

My dear,
art brought about your ending
as surely as it made your life,
yet you would have loved the bittersweet joke
as your kids and I
dressed you in that T-Shirt
for your final viewing.

You surround me even now—
brought two thousand miles
from Northern California
to middle Mexico.
The life you hoped to live, I live with those
who know you only through
your spiral lamp of stone and liana and paper,
Chi Wara standing feathered, bronze and tall,
the nude I posed for, on her side
with sticks for head and feet and cassowary feathers
hanging down from them,
the spirit sled of beaten copper, rawhide and willow—
all of them as exotic as you
never felt yourself to be.

They were beautiful and rare
and loved as you were.
How maddening
that you could not be
convinced of it.

That is why, when I think of you
now, so many years after,
the air grows pungent
with your memory.

(click on first photo to enlarge all)

For some reason, this is the only photo I have of the spiral lamp. I’ll replace it with a better one later.

 

 

To see more of Bob’s art and read another poem about him, go HERE.

 

The prompt today is “pungent.”