Between Was and Will Be, I am.  Raku, hand made, slab built clay torso by Tammy Vitale.

I forgot to post I Am yesterday, which is fine.  I have her to post today.  Only I couldn’t remember her name.  Maybe it’s not her true name and maybe I shouldn’t put it on her back, but she’s going to Cambridge so I guess she better make up her mind soon what her true name is!

Her name comes from a poem I wrote back when I was writing poetry.  I have a published chapbook, Shift, which you can get from Amazon, in case you’s like to see more. You can see a review of Shift by Grace Cavalieri in the Montserrat Review and there are a few reviews at Amazon.  Here’s the poem:

What the Dragon Said

            Tammy Vitale, 12/17/97

There is mercy here:  in the space between

was and will be, I am.

My dreams are full; small creatures

colored brown soil, white rock, red

clay wish to kill me.  I am always

running, and the angles are always

wrong.  I fall down; blue blood trickles

into red water.  Something

unseen joins the parade, clicking

flat teeth together like castanets.

In the morning I bake bread.  This is

a different story; I take it from a different

time.  Outside the trees are slick

as black eels – water does that –

rain, tears, storms that end

and don’t end.  Even the stones

white as doves, bright as

peacocks, feathers, have their part.

I dropped some shiny along the path,

token markers for the game, but children

took  them home, saved them in dusty

corners.  Not returning, I remain.

If I were a bear, I would sleep with no dreams, lulled

by the obsidian crow’s raw song.  The stones

would return, gather round me, speak of moist

earth, red fire, blue ice.  Instead, awake, I roll

the last two in my palm, think of small potatoes, sugar

crystals, eyes.  This place is made of stones

staying still, falling down.  It measures

time the same way that stars do.  Yesterday

I learned of Riverkeepers who hear the river’s story,

know her voice so well they can take words

from her mouth and speak to the deaf

who can only imagine the sound of stones.

Then, I rediscovered swimming; learned

how one sweats, even in cool water.

There is a time when I think I must drown, but

breath comes.  Mercy has a cost.

Here’s today’s Creation for the day for Kat’s Paws month of creativity (to see everyone who’s doing this, click on One A Day in the upper left column here and go browse…You’ll most definitely want to see her butterfly woman…and after seeing it, I need to push myself a bit.)  This one named itself Hope Rising.  I’m still waiting for my new batch of watercolors and am constrained by the 3 primaries I have. 

Enjoy!

thought for the day: Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.  forget yourself.  Henry Miller