Lynne Elizabeth Heiser and Ellen Matthews

To Know the Center
By Lynne Elizabeth Heiser
Mixed media on board, 15″ x 20″
Painted using Ellen Matthews’s poem (below) as inspiration

Desert Mesa
By Ellen Matthews

The tendency is to blast
through the center:
making caves of mountains,
dusty chutes of streams,
dissecting the chambers of a heart,
slicing the open face of a forest.
Extract.  Condense.
Expose the essential.
Discard the wrappings.

But some things force
circumambulation:
a canyon’s walls,
the broad footprint of a mesa
in the desert sun.
Totems of childhood –
lakeshore bonfires,
the ribbon spokes of a maypole,
a carousel’s brass arms.

It’s easy to forget
we live in a universe of orbitals.
What we know of the world
is the space outlined
between objects.

The space is the indivisible center.
Nothing is gained by its destruction.
No resolution of separate forms.
No captured riches.

That is how we confront
the black box of each other.
We account for the space between.
We circle the edge;
and so we come
to know the center.

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Porte Aperte (Open Doors)
By Lynne Elizabeth Heiser
Mixed media on board, 15″ x 20″
Inspiration Piece provided to Ellen Matthews

Stone Story
By Ellen Matthews
Response to Lynne Elizabeth Heiser’s painting (above)

Same old stone story:
a sealed cement box,
stolen; shipped; sold—
a fine treasure, like gold

I shuttered my heart in the center,
so concealment would give it value

Made an artifact of myself
and looked for a buyer
on the black market

But I put a lion at my door;
fastened the locks and dipped
the box in thick bronze rust.

I lay myself in the shallow dust of a dry river
and whispered to the winning raider:
Leave it locked.

Same old stone story:
illegal purchase, private collection
stolen; shipped; sold—
a fine treasure, like gold.