Feeling Human

When you create art, you must reflect on it. Thinking about what it is to be an artist occupies a lot of time. My teachers along the way have made it clear that as an artist you have to be willing to share your humanity. To not be afraid to reveal yourself in some way. If you are to reveal something true about yourself you need to know who you are and your weaknesses- your humanity. Every year on May 26th I feel my humanity, my loss, my sacrifice, my pain. It may seem sappy- get over it- move on. This is the day I lost my mother to breast cancer four years ago. Each year this day rolls around I remember the pain of losing her. It makes me human, it makes me feel weak. It makes me understand loss. It makes me feel human. I share her poems on this day because in them she is not afraid to show her humanness though her observations of simple moments. Her poetry not only reveals something new about her every time I read them, but they make me look more carefully at the life around me. Each thing gurgling up a new truth. Sharing her poetry lets me keep her alive and show others what a beautiful mind she had.  I am not posting a photo for this entry as the poem conjured up it's own image.

Animal Uncertainty

  

Spotted at the edge of a clearing, the doe

freezes and in that moment of hesitation,

carelessly exposes a brown flank

with all the insouciance of a woman undressing.

She lifts a delicate hoof and then

reurns it to the snow with all the grace

of someone who was born to run. Once, long ago,

I watched and elephant near Madison Square Garden

being coaxed up onto a ramp. He carefully

placed his giant foot down, then stepped slowly back,

remembering, perhaps, a former collapse.

The elephant knows his great weight in the world,

how the earth opens up, sometimes without warning.

So much of our lives, we spend paralyzed

by indecision, or excessive ambition.

On good days, we go forward...

And sometimes, that elephant's look comes back,

that great moving mountain of animal sorrows

in moonlight in Manhattan. And that memory of that

midnight scene, that exquisite moment of

an elephant remembering.

  © June Beisch Here is a link to a video of her last reading- only 3 months before she passed away.
June Beisch Reading