An artful transition

One week from tomorrow, on February 18, at 5:30 PM, a new exhibit opens at the Wyoming Area Creative Arts Community's Hallberg Arts Center. Impressions in Nature's Elements is a collaborative exhibit by 11 members of the Community "expressing creativity in stone, glass, wood, metal, clay and other earthy elements." I suppose the readings by local poets fit under the other earthy elements category if our reading voices are deep and husky enough. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibits and sharing a couple of my poems. Before we get to that, though, it'll be time to pick up the photos that have been on exhibit for the past month and find out if any are going to be on display at The Nesting Grounds. That makes this as good a time as any to share the three photos on exhibit but not yet shared as such here. (Those that the Better Half has on display weren't scanned before they were hung, an oversight on my part.)

Winter Marsh 1

Photo by J. Harrington

River Mist 1

Photo by J. Harrington

Great Blue Heron 1

Photo by J. Harrington

The Rosehead Nail

By A. E. Stallings 

Blacksmithing demonstration, mountain arts and crafts fair, Monteagle, TN

“But can you forge a nail?” the blond boy asks,

And the blacksmith shoves a length of  iron rod

Deep in the coal fire cherished by the bellows

Until it glows volcanic. He was a god

Before anachronism, before the tasks

That had been craft were jobbed out to machine.

By dint of   hammer-song he makes his keen,

Raw point, and crowns utility with rose:

Quincunx of facets petaling its head.

The breeze-made-visible sidewinds. The boy’s

Blonde mother shifts and coughs. Once Work was wed

To Loveliness — sweat-faced, swarthy from soot, he

Reminds us with the old saw he employs

(And doesn’t miss a beat): “Smoke follows beauty.”

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