I heard this poem today

watercolour of a quilt idea

The hour is striking so close above me,

the 9 year old's mermaid 

So clear and sharp, that all my senses ring with it.

the 6 year old's mermaid

 

I feel it now: there's a power in me

April with forsythia from Toronto

to grasp and give shape to my world.

embroidery from Mexico

I know that nothing has ever been real

green quilt by April

without my beholding it.

forsythia in bloom

All becoming has needed me.

My looking ripens things

and they come toward me, to meet and be met.

Rainer Maria Rilke
 

it will be ok

I am writing this post to help me see

what am I doing?

I don't know

I've been home a week.

I was in Ottawa with family.

I've been working on this green piece solidly since.

I keep simplifying.  There was more red, but I've removed it.

I've only left the heart.

I've run out of fabric, but I keep going. 

I scrounge yellows and creams to stretch the green.

This green nourishes me so much.  The happiness of it.  

The earthiness of it.  The hope in it

I'm also helped by the motion of my hands.

In and out the needle goes.  In and out my breath.

I had the idea that I was nearly done.

But I'm not.

my ordinary yet dramatic life

The life that I am living through right this minute tumbles forward, all around, and is stitched into the work in my lap.

Fabrics from a challenging project become mixed in a personal lived way with my present. 

I spend quiet time with them, hours of time, using my body in gentle gestures,

to make something forever mixed with my ordinary yet dramatic life.