For 7 years I’ve been chasing the same idea. Something as simple as lying in the grass and looking up at the sky. The quiet fullness of that moment. The way it starts, and the way it ends. Moments when “the world is too full to talk about”, as Rumi says. It’s the awareness of being fully here, toes in the dirt, while also holding the sense of something greater. And realizing those two perceptions are not so far apart. Holding space within yourself for two worlds to touch. 

Lately I’ve been listening to Jack Kornfield speak in his podcast “Heart Wisdom”. It makes it easier for me to breathe most days. He’s very honest and real about the state of the world and life’s predicaments, and talks about how to move through life with grace and equanimity. In an episode I was listening to the other day, he read a poem by Mary Oliver I hadn’t come across before- titled, “Some Questions You Might Ask”:

“Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?”

So here I am, asking, in this painting and so many others: what about the grass?

Oil on canvas

40” x 32”

2021