Photo Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renaissance Tapestries

The Material

Work of hands.
Offering.
Then vanishing vanishing.
Yet the gesture
remains,
work of hands,
the material.

The word's insides.
We are aware
more keenly
of the invisible
insides of the deads'
offering.
Invisible,
offered
by the living
or the dead.

More aware
of the unearthly offering
when offered
by the unearthly,
the word's inside
slowly sounding
never ending echo
of the mind's Shangrila.

The material
tracing
spirit's breath--
or the painting,
the movement
of the eye
over the land--
and then,
and then the
see,
this is
not really what I saw
but more, other,
this is all
I saw
and in the drops
of colour
can you feel
it there,
the inside
I was
there,
I saw,
I offer
this to you,
I disappear.
It is not really
me, I am
not really it,
this is the work
of my hands,
seeing
how we are
of
each.

The material
the material
the material.


Jim Andrews

Back to the Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks