This is a mandala I created during the first snowstorm of the season, which happened to fall on the Winter Solstice. It was warm and toasty at the kitchen table and yummy food was being cooked while I painted. I made a wish for all my dear ones while I sat there dipping my tiny brush into richly colored dabs of guache. This is the second mandala I’ve made in the past month. I have to say I relish making them. I love the mystery of not really knowing what it will look like until I’m done. It requires sitting still, sticking with the process. This mandala took me about 4 hours to complete. There were times during the process when I thought — this thing is ugly! But I knew in my heart that it would become a thing of beauty in the end, so I just kept going, as I am want to do — I just keep going.

Here’s the first one I made:

As it happens, I made it on my oldest son’s  14th birthday. This one took about 3 hours. It was another snowy day (hmmmm there’s a pattern here) and we were hunkered down in the warm house with movies and various baked goods.  Every once in a while my son would peek in to my studio to see how it was progressing. At first, he wasn’t very impressed, but by the time it was finished, he thought it was totally cool.  Wishes for my son are inside this one: wishes for passion and zeal and love and health and humility.

 The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky –
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.