Five Poems on Art by Miki Lovett, by Johanna Caton, O.S.B.

Paths, by Miki Lovett (USA) contemporary

Beyond

The fog
is dense
I cannot
see
beyond
the fence
beyond
the tree
 
the gate
I climb
beyond
the pond
the little
rhyme
beyond
beyond

Mountain Trail, by Miki Lovett (USA) contemporary

Life-Line
 
That mountain trail looks like my life-line.  
It comes out of shadow and undertakes a climb. 
Beginnings are often so: technique seems mastered, 
prodigy-style (which time lavishly disproves). 
Then the little plateau.  Nothing really amiss here.  
And now another steady climb.  Applause applause.  
 
And then oh that loop back on myself.  
What retro-spirit possessed me? that valley? 
that gorge? that drop-lake?  No technique here but  
herculean climb up a perpendicular gut-rock, no 
technique except survival instinct surviving half dead. 
 
But, the line lives.  A flatter walk now headed west.
And so, which deadly sin was next?  
complacency?  fear?  Lot’s wife?  The line 
plummets, down that shadowed place I thought I’d left. 
It felt something like being starkers in a blizzard.  
 
But now, cut the drama,
but now, rise again, and climb and climb and climb, 
steady now and steady, stay this course damn it, finally 
horizon, sea and sunrise meet my life-line and it seems 
to be a long arm, reaching over that sea, ending with a hand 
lifted slightly, blessing from the bottom up, and look 
at that loop –  it is a head, inclined like a woman swept
in a waltz.  But that is the ending and I am not there yet.

Words From a Dark Place, by Miki Lovett (USA) contemporary

The Portrait  

I like me.
I like my mix of the square and the curvy,
the safe and the surprising.  I like the way 
my square points upward, reminiscent 
of Leonardo da Vinci’s John the Baptist.
I like the way my arms gather east and west 
in a sea-toned swirl.  I like it that I’m earth-
toned on top – earthed, where I need to be, 
where my head is, my thoughts.  I am a celebration 
of opposites: of discipline and freedom, stillness 
and movement.  And look: the Word is behind me: 
the Word from a dark place, not fully formed, 
but becoming – oh, and my name is Grace.  And under-
neath, a heart-beat: the wash of luminous flesh.

Find the Way Out, by Miki Lovett (USA) contemporary

Thinking About the Prodigal Son 
​
He found the way out, alright.  Now he needs to get
back in, back in to the centre rich with russet, 
warm enfolding.  Ok that looks like a sword blade 
but there’s no real door.  He can crawl in there 
squeeze through and curl up, and those golden rounds 
at the centre, if he can ever get there, if that tangle could 
stop stopping my mind blocking itself by actor’s lines, 
lies, webbed, imbedded, making my eyes seep 
more binding threads, if only i could just keep going 
then that still centre, rich and russet? that’ll be arms;
those tangles outside?  they’ll be the air-born warm
swirls of incense perfume from Father’s breast.
those golden rounds inside the little room
those golden rounds, that rood?  the fatted calf –
everything food, everything pulsing laughter
all waiting for this hopeless roaming’s 
homing.

Untitled, by Miki Lovett (USA) contemporary

A Short Story 
 
A sunbathed village in France or Spain on a midsummer day?  If you like. 
Stuccoed walls, straight and resistant, the church’s square bell-tower,
the narrow alleys, and that blue sky, seductive as a siren that
 
wails in the distance, to warn: a cold wind comes obliquely and whips 
your hair, the harsh slap of wind, angry as a tyrannical parent, just as brutal; 
tender hopes are aborted here before they’re anywhere near the birth 
 
canal.  Brown skinny tree trunks are things to hold on to.  Stumble 
down bright empty streets, amid sunny walls supported against every
intrusion.  You belong in the bell-tower, ringing the mystery.

Johanna Caton, O.S.B.

Johanna Caton, O.S.B. is a Benedictine nun of Minster Abbey in Kent, England.  She was born in Virginia and lived in the U.S. until adulthood, when her vocation took her to the U.K.  Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover Literary Journal, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, on The Catholic Poetry Room, www.integratedcatholiclife.org, and in other venues, both online and print.  ​

Miki Lovett works in etching, monoprint and marbling.  She lives in Mashpee, Massachusetts, and her website link is www.mikilovett.com.  Miki exhibits and sells her work from online venues as well as from several art centres in Massachusetts.