Some initial capitals, in scratchboard with digital colour, for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, “Beginning“. They are, as usual, test pieces for another larger project, but I chose the letters based on what I thought were the first letters of some recent poems. I managed to get one completely wrong.
Last week, Terri Windling held a winter poetry challenge on her blog. Below are three of my contributions. The first, on bears, I posted with the last Illustration Friday picture. One other is not here because it turns out it did not start with the letter “I”. So I have a spare capital and a poem to post later. If you are a fan of poetry, illustration, myths, fables or fairytales, I recommend checking out the posts – there are many more poems in the comments.
BAVARIA
(Theme: Snow White, and a memory of first encountering a landscape out of fairytales)
hen apple trees scrabbled to view,
Above a wall, boughs half-unleaved,
Heavy with portent and truth,
All bronze and pewter, I believed.
When garnet, pomegranate fruit,
Struck at my heart, I almost grieved.
(The castles only ever were
Sprung from some wild dream-aquifer).
Snow falling from the mirrored sky,
Softened the blow. But then when I
Saw winter forests spider-grey
All webbed and knotted out of view,
(So little space to struggle through),
I knew the stories all were true.
CUSTOM
(Theme: Deer in Fairy Tales, Folklore and Myth, which fit with recent research on legends of white deer for another project)
e do not say we saw a deer. We saw
The starlight slanting through rain-silvered leaves
The mist lift off the lake, owls through the trees
Glide white and silent. This, and nothing more.
We do not say we saw a figure pale
Among the rushes, long-limbed, loitering.
We saw the rushes only, rustling,
The thin frost freezing to a glassy veil.
We do not speak of tracks that, seen too near,
Appear to change from hooves to naked feet.
We do not speak of strangers whom we meet –
Such questions only ever cost too dear.
We keep an older law:
These two have always been
Separate: What you have seen
And what you say you saw.
ROBIN’S FLIGHT
(Theme: The Wild in Myth, Folklore and Fantasy)
ut of rumour and night,
Blood and bone,
Something knotted and gnarled
Had sprouted and grown.
A tree climbed out of a heart.
It may have been
Oak or ash or elder,
Or else from a dream –
Not evergreen.
When the crown of gold and scarlet
Tarnished to grey
The branches clutched at sky.
Something had flown away.
Your work always makes me smile! Thank you. :)
Thank *you*!
I am late in commenting on these, but I wanted to say: I think Tolkien would have liked these! Really nice, and the words go very well with the illustrations.
Thank you so much, Will! And thank you both also for the Christmas card.