Original Landscape Study in Oil of Trees and Pink Sky

"Twilight Study"

Oil on Canvas panel

8"x10"

NFS

The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

Oil Painting Still Life Original of Yellow Apples by Cheryl Ratcliff

 

“Golden Apples”

Oil on stretched canvas

6”x6”

$35.00

 

 

Sweet Summer Days

by Dennis Caraher

The summer sun is nearly done
Frost will follow soon
Asters and chrysanthemums
Light up the afternoon

The dew is on long after dawn
Mornings are a haze
One swallow's song is holding on
In these fading sweet summer days.

We flew across the ocean
Some fell into the sea
God will choose what we will lose
Though we may disagree

We come here to be mended
That we may find our way
We pray that there's redemption
In these fading sweet summer days

Summer months comfort us
The sun comes with sustenance
We live for its lingering light

Days slip away from us
Katydids and crickets hush
We drift into lengthening night.

We were once our children
Too soon they will be us
All they ask, a simple task:
"Remember how it was".

We hold them close, we let them go
We watch them fly away
And if we trust, they'll come to us
In these fading sweet summer days

Stars they are innumerable
We'll never know them all
But nature's not immutable
Every star will fall

And one day, I'll return to thee
And all that will remain
Is the beauty and the certainty
of these fading sweet summer days