Through The Doorway Unto A Canvas

 

The shop rattled. Antique bottles broke.

Oil and vinegar spilled

staining the stone pavement.

A painting of saplings

that caught the eye of the crow.

 

He landed keeping

his large wings open, umbrella'd

 as if to protect

this sudden print

crafted by the quake.

 

He clenched an olive pit

in his beak 

and dropped it at the point

where a sprig should leaf

and flower, reveal the bead work

of rain, the white  luster

of a moth. Where a  woman's hands

 

on a hillside terrace

tied string around a vineyard branch.

A tree she  had planted  to praise

her husband's return from the dead --

its tasting room

of mold  and shuttered light.

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Recently, with the occurrence of the earthquake in The Napa Valley, I was looking at various pictures of destruction done to cafes, shops, houses in the town and the  lay-out of  vineyards in the distance. What caught my attention was a photo of an olive oil and vinegar tasting shop/room that had suffered tremors from the quake. Bottles of precious oil and vinegar broke while the contents spilled out of the doorway onto the sidewalk. They stained the pavement with streaks that resembled saplings on a van Gogh or even Monet canvas. It was an entrance into sudden art crafted by the event. It left an impression, a design that tempted the mind to envision different scenes and to invite strange or familiar possibilities, memories. I thought of a crow landing there with an olive stone in its mouth, a guide to what this all could symbolize, how this spontaneous print could be a marker of hope, a link to somewhere else and someone else who had planted a vineyard tree in gratitude, in praise of her husband's return from dark depression. A splattering on the pavement that becomes a metaphorical gateway to new beginnings and growth.