top of page

Sarah Painting at Scorton Creek

To sketch a river is to bring into being,

inescapably, the land that it also drains.​

What was originally whole with her deft

moves is suddenly, shockingly, in pieces,​

water, banks, with no indexicality I see,

slopes, slanting plants, verdant grasses,

all the things she unravels, placing them

by transferal and a rapidly wisping brush

where one cannot quite see them anymore

as quite the way they were, including here

the rim of a small bridge by the river

under which she sits, separating grasses,

distant houses, water, banks, all in pieces,

small plants, nothing quite the way it was,

when all of sudden reformed and reaffirmed

and more than whole they reappear on canvas,

brought not only into being but transformed

by the integrating beauty of a human hand,

and we see at last, pleasure out of pain,

that she has put them back together again!

​                                    ~ Alexander Theroux

© Copyright 2016

bottom of page