When Flowers Grow Free, Pen and Ink andComputer Drawing Tools, ©by Ruth Zachary.
To see more art and read about the drawing
techniques, go to ruthzacharyart.blogspot.com.
Daffodils
Daffodils appeared on the hill
I planned to move them
to a cultivated place.
After digging two feet down
those tender shoots drooped
disappointed, snapped off by accident,
where stems curved in earth
from some deep nocturnal residence.
.
Roots undiscovered, buried
there twenty years or more
by a dozer digging a drain field
beneath the hill. What will to live
could endure such valiant effort?
How many years, if ever,
before they found the sun again?
.
Not long.Their roots in darkness knew
not only when spring arrived
but how to grow toward the sun.
And I, compelled by nature's need
to love, obeyed some internal
compass drawing me to light.
.
This past month I have experienced a time like this, when many of my creative efforts failed. I started over each time with a new approach to make my ideas materialize, until I began to learn from the failures. Some experiments and some visions do have limits. They have natural ways to grow which are inherent to their nature.
I wanted to integrate my abstractions with realistic images, but as long as I sought to do this using the old methods, the attempts didn’t work. As soon as I realized I would have to work differently, and to use black and white without color, my efforts began to work. And because I wanted the images to be used for illustrations in poetry chapbooks, black and white was well suited to the planned use.
I am very pleased with the process and with the results. I feel as if I have come out of the darkness into the sun. What I have learned is to be patient, and to realize creativity doesn’t only exist when things seem to go right. It is still there, even when it seems dormant. Creativity lies deep within, and with continued nurturing and effort, beauty manifests in its own time and way.
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