She was on the ground, stiff.
I made her final refuge
from storm and ice inside
a round box with skeleton leaves
and rose petals glued onto pale
green ribbon walls. Her frozen
wings remained bent as if to fly.
That year my mother was dying
and I thought we let each other go.
We work together again,
to photograph the moth
in her round casket.
Behind the lens, light varies
from warm to cool, circle
distorts to bowl, walls blur
the actual object. My camera
seems unable to capture somber
space where art meets death.
This dubiety is like our struggle
with how we see each other,
how others see us, like all
we do not know since we
separated, like the crumbling of wings
I pick up with tips of my fingers.
Carrie Albert is a poet and visual artist of multi genres who presently resides in Seattle. She was raised running free on a California walnut orchard. She credits this early freedom as well as the proximity and consumption of so many nuts as the progenitors of her creativity. Nuts of all varieties, whether observed or consumed, are now her muse. Her works can be seen at Penhead Press and also ink sweat and tears where she has been Artist in Residence. She continues hard at work integrating the written word into visual dreams.
