Artist Unknown, by Mary Chris Bailey

Artist, date, origin unknown.

Artist Unknown
 
Follow wheat buzzes with the wind,
the soft tops tickle my palms.
From a wood pile in a discarded field
a roughhewn visage stares at me. 
Board nose & crooked mouth,
chiseled face, silvered patina--
Artist unknown.
 
Kept close for near five decades
hung on walls from here to there.
Disdained by some:
Too crude, too poorly rendered,
too stern, maybe frightening.
Your starkness draws me.
Reminds me of then.
            
Then, what was coming—unknown.
What had been—pushed aside.
Crafting a lived story, breathing
in the day, exhaling the future.
 
Then was Jodie, David, Jimbo & Judy Blueskies,
Owl Creek Farm, Fool on the Hill & Down the Road.
Once, strangers gathered in yurts, & farmhouses.
Cows milked, chickens fed, food harvested.
Music, art & poetry were created.
Wanting to remake the world--
thinking we had the answer.
 
Then travelers wandered through,
hoping to share our community. 
We partied, danced, denounced the war, 
spoke of injustice & railed against the man.
 
Then was the annual pig roast. 
Short hair John Birch farmers with made families
Long-haired hippies with chosen families, 
gathered, shared potluck, & conversations,
as fiddlers' strings twanged, a square dance
and called opposites to weave and reel together.
 
Our journey from coast to coast,
from North to South marked
by explosive joy & shattering grief
that threatened to break me apart.

And yet you and I remain. 
I accept what life has given me. As I sit
in stillness under your watchful eyes.

Mary Chris Bailey

Mary Chris Bailey is a retired pediatric emergency medicine physician. In retirement, she can often be found willing words to flow from her brain to the keyboard and onto the computer screen. Her work has been published in Please See me, Defenestration, The Gulf Coast Bards Anthology, and others.  She lives with her husband and two dogs. Her dogs love her writing. Her husband is withholding judgement.