Elmore & Ostrowski – Feb. 15

Nicole K. Ostrowski and Jennifer Elmore traded art and words. Nicole shared this painting, entitled “Liquid Daffodils,” with Jennifer:

In response, Jennifer wrote this poem:

To the Artist

If you ask what’s in it for me,
the first thing I’ll say is: Nature’s first
green is gold. A little language to match
your reality. But this is my habit – hitching
a stretch of black and white remarks together
and hoping they hold. There are limits
to what I can do. But you
are free. Committed maybe
to not committing or just committed
to being in the flow, where nothing is
pinned in place. I catch your pink

in my peripheral vision, and off I spin,
off my word axis, into your watery map
of continents in transit. Is this what
your abstraction is? Or is it
the aftermath of an argument,
the first swirl of a theory? The signal
inside my eyes to sleep? Could it be
the way my face cools in an unscripted
wind? Or the moment I undo everything
I’ve worked so many years to finish,
letting go into the blur of not remembering
a name or into whatever feeling comes
with a full breath. Wouldn’t you say
we are blending, we are moving?

We are talking without speaking.

* * * * *

Jennifer shared this poem with Nicole:

The Connecticut

Remember the day we stepped off
the dock into kayaks? Red plastic
hulls and wind kicking up a chop.
All those tiny, joyful waves that took
the sun for granted. Your baseball hat,
set against the glare. In the middle
of digging through water, I thought:
we have to do this again. I have to
spring you from your silver car and
all the habits of getting by: stopping
for gas and stopping for corn, dragging
trashcans to the end of the driveway,
paying bills in front of the television.
I saved you once before. The big story
of my arrival was that I kept you out
of Vietnam. I kept you in your bed
with mom, and you rocked my cradle
with your foot. The wind didn’t take
your hat. For a while, I got to talk
to more than a picture. I got to talk
you into taking this minor adventure.
Though it only happened once: me
watching you paddle ahead in your
blue windbreaker, the gulls
open-winged above us.

In response, Nicole made this painting, entitled “Yesteryear”: