Little Wing

Little Wing /  oil on black canvas, 5x7, unframed, $68 including shipping

available - please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

LAST NIGHT, when I let the dogs out, I heard Canada geese calling, their cries ululating, thin, eerie, wavering loudly through the wintry air. They call me to the past, to other cold nights, in Idaho, in Montana, in Maine, nights that could not have been darker, more strewn with stars.

We picked out the easy constellations, watched the greenish dances of the Northern Lights, marveled at the distant glow and blur of the Milky Way, and counted dozens - or hundreds or thousands? - of meteors shooting across the black infinity.

And I thought that it would never stop. That these shared, clear nights would be as regular as the comings and goings of the birds, as typical, as predictable, as unending.

***

A Thought for the Day

GUY WILKINS WAS an artist who lived here in Wachapreague. He died just about the same time we moved here, and I have always, always been sorry that I never met him, never painted with him.

Friends on the Shore here have paintings of his, and I wish I did, too. His paintings are bright and colorful, cheery and different and unusual. I have a postcard of one of the general store here in town, and I look at it almost daily, loving its color, its attitude and its odd perspective.

Guy Wilkins also wrote poems, and I'd like to share one with you here. It is from his book, "Day Moon."

Derelicts

What a full blown beauty you were
That day we first set sail
We had lavished every spar and every rail
With the best in varnish
And the brass we thought would never tarnish
And the gloss would never pale

Now look at you
Warped and twisted
Like the rest of us
With the brass we thought would never tarnish,
Tarnished
And the luster somehow vanished
Oh I wish they could have seen us
You and I, when we were young


To see paintings by Guy Wilkins, please visit http://www.guywilkinsartist.com/