A Commingle of Art and Time

Sunday Salon Assignment Select two objects - observe, color, shape, function, history, and association to note the attributes of each. Find a connection, write. A Commingle of Time and Art By Mary Strong Jackson From the boy afraid of monsters from the darkest brown eyes dollops of tears dropped while his older brother stepped unafraid while his little sister stomped her foot this boy’s pencil made superheroes bound off the page until time morphed them into charcoal Chinese Death Masks, sketches from movie stills, and wild evolving characters moving about from his pencil’s tip, slope, and eraser this boy grown to man in a slip of time gave me Frankenstein’s monster framed in greens and blacks in the closed-eyed body of Boris Karloff two beings in one now share space in my house placed beside the poster-sized photo of the highway outside my window once on a stormy night I lie in bed with Mary Shelley candle lit puffed pillows behind her writing the story of a doctor and his monster she hears the cracking sound of a breaking mesa split to build a highway she sits straight up in bed inspired to write the sounds of a mob carrying torches, splitting fences and doors while under New Mexico blues, a couple from across the briny sea visit and snap the riven mesa into the still life on my shelf beside near the delicate monster years past Mary Shelley’s words, past the Civil War, and the moon landing, past droughts, and monsoons in the snow globe of another time, my Nick, Matt and Yanni take the highway with the Monster settled in the back seat with a sandwich better eaten over a sink his flat head higher than everyone’s in the white Rabbit convertible under the same blues in the photo dollops of tears from all of them drying on the breezy ride crying for whatever they are whatever this is sweet tears for un-erasable connections across an arms-length of art in the spaces of time