Sitting

Sitting (Stacy Wills, 2015)

24" x 36" acrylic on canvas

Love came and emptied me of self,

every vein and every pore,

made into a container

to be filled by the Beloved.

Of me, only a name is left,

the rest is You my Friend,

my Beloved.

Abu-Said Abil Kheir,

Sufi poet (967-1049)

Creation Song

Womb of Creation (Stacy Wills, 2014)

alcohol inks on yupo + sacred altering

Creation Song

What did

 you know 

of me

before you 

formed me

 in the womb?

What dreams

 did you dream

 for me?

What plans

 did you make

 for me?

What song

 were you singing

while knitting

 my bones?

-Stacy Wills (12/17/10)

Dove that ventured outside…a poem by Rilke

The Dove that Ventured Outside (Stacy Wills, 2014)

alcohol ink on yupo  4" x 6"

Dove that ventured outside, 

flying far from the dovecote:

housed and protected again,

one with the day, the night,

knows what serenity is,

for she has felt her wings

pass through all distance and fear

in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home,

never exposed to loss,

innocent and secure, 

cannot know tenderness;

only the won-back heart 

can ever be satisfied:  free,

through all it has given up,

to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself

over the vast abyss.

Ah the ball that we dared,

that we hurled into infinite space,

doesn't it fill our hands

differently with its return:

heavier by the weight 

of where it has been.

-Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

Scraps of Moon - A Poem by Denise Levertov

Moon River (Stacy Wills, 2014)

alcohol inks on yupo + sacred altering

Scraps of Moon

Scraps of moon

bobbing discarded 

on broken water

but sky-moon

complete, transcending

all violation

Here she seems to be

 talking to herself about

the shape of a life:

Only Once

All which, because it was

flame and song 

and granted us joy,

we thought we'd do, be, revisit,

turns out to have been what it was

that once, only;

every invitation did not begin

a series, a build-up:

the marvelous did not happen

in our lives, our stories

are not drab with its absence:

but don't expect to return

for more.  Whatever more

there will be will be

unique as those were unique. 

Try to acknowledge the next song

 in its body-halo of flames

 as utterly present,

as now or never.

-from The Great Unknowing:  Last Poems

by Denise Levertov (1923 - 1997)

Summer Story - A poem by Mary Oliver

Hummingbird (Stacy Wills, 2013)

alcohol inks on ceramic tile + sacred altering

Summer Story

by Mary Oliver

When the hummingbird

sinks its face

into the trumpet vine,

and the funnels

of the blossoms

and the tongue

leaps out

and throbs,

I am scorched

to realize once again

how many small, available things

are in the world

that aren't 

pieces of gold

or power---

that nobody owns

or could buy even

for a hillside of money---

that just 

float about  the world,

or drift over the fields,

or into the gardens,

and into the tents of the vines,

and how here I am

spending my time,

as the saying goes,

watching until the watching turns into feeling,

so that I feel I am myself

a small bird 

with a terrible hunger,

with a thin beak probing and dipping

and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heart beat ahead of breaking---

and I am the hunger and assuagement,

and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,

and, like them, I am full of delight and shaking

Clothed with the Sun

Clothed with the Sun (Stacy Wills, 2012)

photography + sacred altering

There is a morning inside you

waiting to burst open into light.

-Rumi  (1207 - 1273)

Source image:  Sunrise at Orange Beach, Alabama

The Agate

Agates (Stacy Wills, 2013)

alcohol inks on yupo

The Agate

The Lapidary's skill reveals

that Time has worked her magic -

Was it a rainbow under pressure

that became the treasured agate?

-Stacy Wills (6/14/2013)

Consider the Lilies: An Invitation to Rest

Stargazer Lily (Stacy Wills, 2013)

alcohol inks on ceramic tile

Why is it so hard 

for us to rest?  Did not

 John recline upon

 his Savior's breast at table?

Follow his example.

Do the lilies of the field 

toil and spin? Yet

no one thinks that it's a sin

for them to glorify God 

the way they do,

dressed more finely

than Solomon, and that

not of their doing.

Consider, oh yes...

consider them, when tempted

to worry about anything.

-Stacy Wills (4/21/2013)

Pilgrim Walk

Pilgrim Walk (Stacy Wills, 2013)

alcohol inks on yupo

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain

  sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow. 

                                                 - A. C. Benson (1862 - 1925)

Green Mountain (a poem by Li Po)

Green Mountain (Stacy Wills, 2013)

alcohol inks on yupo,  2 1/2" x 4 1/4"

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;

I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.

As the peach blossom flows down stream

and is gone into the unknown,

I have a world apart that is not among men.

Li Po (701-762)

See the Flowers

The Dreaming Garden (Stacy Wills, 2013)

9" x 12" alcohol inks on yupo

See the flowers, so faithful to Earth.

We know their fate because we share it.

Were they to grieve for their wilting,

that grief would be ours to feel.

There's a lightness in things.  Only we move forever burdened,

pressing ourselves into everything, obsessed by weight.

How strange and devouring our ways must seem

to those for whom life is enough.

If you could enter their dreaming and dream with them deeply,

you would come back different to a different day,

moving so easily from that common depth.

Or maybe just stay there:  they would bloom and welcome you,

all those brothers and sisters tossing in the meadows,

and you would be one of them.

-Rainer Maria Rilke  (1875-1926)

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 14 

Moonrise

Moonrise (Stacy Wills, 2012)

The man who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)