Pixels, by Janet Ruth

Letter from the Farm, by Larry Schulte (USA) contemporary

Pixels
  
Step close to examine all the pieces -- 
small circles, triangles, rectangles -- drift -- 
like Seurat’s pointillist dots -- every 
one a pixelation of memory. 
  
Taken apart -- put back together -- 
a pasture -- a dirt track -- a line of trees -- 
a childhood sense of place -- a treasury 
in the pixelation of memory. 
  
Like squares in Grammy’s quilts -- each reemploys 
remnants of another project -- a dress -- 
curtains -- rematched into a complementary 
scene -- the pixelation of memory. 
  
Across the images -- a word -- a phrase -- 
flowing in cursive -- a few of the thousands 
from mother’s weekly epistolary 
messages -- pixelations of memory -- 
  
don’t always mirror the original. 
Step back -- each pixel falls into its place -- 
a larger picture forms -- mosaic from tesserae 
combined -- the pixelation of memory. 
  
All is framed, as if through that old screen door 
on the back porch -- sequins punched -- turquoise from sky -- 
green leaves -- yellow dust -- a reverie -- 
faded pixelation of memories. 
  
At the seams, fine stitching binds fragments -- 
scarlet threads -- shards sewn back together -- something 
new and beautiful -- Nebraska kintsugi -- 
crafted from pixelations of memory. 
  
 Janet Ruth

​Janet Ruth is a New Mexico ornithologist and poet. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world.  She has poems in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. Her sonnet, “A World That Shimmers,” won the inaugural True Concord Poetry Contest, was set to music by the 2023 winner of the Emerging Composer Contest and was performed by True Concord Voices and Orchestra in Tucson, October 2023. Her book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards.   https://redstartsandravens.com/janets-poetry/