Nocturne
Your dreams settle over my sleep. A great smear of red. Bella. Sun singes my fingers when I touch. Onyx eyes and grim pressed lips. A tornado of birds circle. Her throat offers a thousand small wishes. Boots churning dust as the Poles threaten a rearranged world. A nun in white habit makes angels in the snow.
Tina Barry
I’m Clairvoyant
When I Hold a Finger to My Ear
I hear your call, brined in salt yet distinct. You challenge me to a duel of rhymes, but I’ve sparred with you before. Can you smell my longing through the rivets of your palm? Hear the rain pummel my coat?
Your Fate Line is My Fate Line
Why pretend otherwise? A tortoise raises its head, admires the shadow of its profile on the ocean. Shoals of your skin bob and cool. I warn the children not to swim there.
I Picture a Raft in Your Future
Tattoo my back with seaweed, conch shells, anchors and Apollo’s lyre. Think of me as a new ocean to voyage. The sun line deepens heading south.
All Lines Lead to Impatience
I’ve conjured a route with Mercury to guide me. Mussels shiver in nets. Buoys bounce. The hull is below, resplendent in its weather. Take me there. Even the boat creaks with complaint. It’s traveled too far for romance.
Tina Barry
Images of a buoyant, watery world float in Danin’s “Take me There,” a watercolor inspired by Barry’s “I’m Clairvoyant.”
Barbara Danin is a Philadelphia-based painter who works in watercolor and collage. Her watercolors “piece together shards of information that create relationships between past/present, the realms of spirit and earth, abstract/representational, and inner and outer realities. I attempt to create visual journeys with life-affirming memories and themes that offer solace, refuge and meditative spaces.”