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Creative Pulse

In the room of windows
on the second floor of my mother's
rented house
amid photographs, paints and palates
easels and studies,
stands the sketch of Mary Thomas,
my mother's mother.

I live far away from my mother now
and see the sketch only occasionally,
each time appreciating its evolution.

My mother works in pencil
from a yellowing black and white snapshot
of my grandmother standing before a Greyhound Bus,
the nostalgic logo, a dog in mid-gallop,
distinctly stenciled on the side.

On the photo's back, the words Pontiac Illinois
written in black ink. I like to hope
she was on sabbatical
from marriage and motherhood.

In the sketch's nascence, lines as faint as the fragrance
my grandmother used to wear tenderly graced
the artist's pad to imply the objects they dreamt
to represent.

Gradations of gray and black
have since provided shadows and
dimension. The sketch has taken on emotion
and the combined spirit of generations.

Because it was denied my grandmother,
my mother lives a creative life,
images her medium, tint and hue her vision.

As her creation, I am part of a creative pulse
longstanding if sometimes timid.
Words form my art, guiding me always
towards my life-beat.

Learn more about this author, Lisa Hase.
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