Three Artworks
i. Pastels, T. Eastman (2021)
This is the world we come from
Pink mist billows on the ground
Angular blue gray mountains
An echoing dark cavern
A ledge with sweeping vista
ii. Acrylic, G. Orozco (2020)
This is the world we come from
A blue stone ledge, a pink vale
A woman sits cross-legged
A sea of upraised faces
A ring of jagged mountains
iii. Oil, J. Eastman (1963)
This is the world we come from
A circle of blue gray cliffs
Raspberry mist in valley
Crumbling purple pyramids
Abandoned white-spired city
Shiny
cross-legged on blankets under the stars
binoculars and night-goggles fixed on the sky
excited as children trying to catch
Santa in the act of unloading his pack
but these shiny santas do not fear being caught
or documented with shaky-hand-held phones
posted, tweeted, liked and shared
like a global-scale first-grade show-and-tell
brazenly toying with our laser pointers
prancing and dancing and dashing like comets
Oh! the children gasp and cry
staying up way past their bedtimes
to spy luminous orbs
spilling
from
a gossamer
sack
as if
it slid
off Santa’s
back
* * * * * *
* * * *
grownups should know there’s no Santa Claus
no matter how much children may wish it
sitting cross-legged chanting
om shanti shanti shanti
if we love you, you won't hurt us
if we love you, you won't hurt us
lasers blink out dots and dashes, SOS, save our souls
high above our precious earth the stranger flashes back
hello
so gently, or so the watchers think
with low expectations of what passes as love
if a blinked eye in the night sky comforts us
tells us we’ve been good all year
by carelessly dropping off a cheap gift
on Christmas day
like a deadbeat dad
grown ups say that, much like Santa Claus
the unidentified don't exist
NASA watches, SETI listens
for sight of sleigh or sound of bells
proof is redacted, conclusions inconclusive
we are well-schooled that it’s a children’s tale
*
but
one night
in a snowy
forest in Alaska
where Christmas trees
grow wild not far from
the North Pole where santa
supposedly spurs his sleigh into
an elusive blur
two
orbs
were
caught
playing
tag
so perhaps the children are right after all
magic can fly, reindeer graze in a field of stars
shiny noses without bodies or form
here only to amuse and delight
to make us oooh and awe
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