Over Oakwood

Over Oakwood

~ trompe-l'œil æssemblage art & essay by Michael Douglas Jones

Original artwork available at Gallery 322

  Over an oakwood fire, the water I had drawn from the well on Sunday, rose in a steam cloud from the kitchen kettle, and drifted dreamlike out the open window into the winter sky.

  I held my head back, and drank it in deeply from the spring rain.

  This water quenched my summer thirst, and a joy of recognition welled up in me.

  It rolled down my cheek as a tear, dropping onto the ground, where it joined a fallen leaf from the autumn tree.

  The leaf and water merged into the soil to become the budding oak beside the well, where I had drawn water on Sunday.

                         

                          ~Michael Douglas Jones

❦ 

 

Both Bowl and Spoon

Both Bowl and Spoon

~ trompe-l'œil æssemblage art & essay by Michael Douglas Jones

Original artwork available at Gallery 322

Journal Entry; Amelia Courthouse, Virginia; April 5

 

   There were gentlemen; there were heroes; there were common men, and cowards. Death was equal in its coming. That I survived is not enough; I must prosper, that those boys be remembered. I will remember them to my own sweet mother, and if I should meet their mothers, I shall describe them, each and all, as gallant troopers to the last breath; heroic sons of America.

   The many wars waged for causes, just and unjust, are eventually resolved; history is written and revised as years pass, but mothers whose sons never return will hold that simple truth in their eyes, and still continue to give again. They know no other way. 

   A mother is both bowl and spoon; filling, sharing, giving; seeking nothing in return; overflowing, holding nothing back.

   I have nothing to offer these mothers, only my eyes looking into their eyes, letting them know that they are not empty; that I too am their son, and they are loved. 

                         

                          ~Michael Douglas Jones

❦