Swelling Pool, Oil on Wood, Watercolor, 2025, 48H" x 9 1/2W" x 4D"


The Earth speaks to my Father

in shades of umber and cerulean
he shapes them into the crags and eddies
of unnamed forests and blackwoods pools
paradigms curving across the Stickley urbanity
of our living room landscape
in half-remembered forms
of rustling waterfalls
and cascading leaves

His eyes hold the flickering heat of a campfire
seem through the black bracken of the northwoods
his voice is the sharp boom of a Superior thaw
but he keeps it close inside him
he is listening.

-Emily Zebrun