MYSTERY IN THE ART

“my soul is from elsewhere,

                            I’m sure of that…”      Rumi

 

The shape of a young woman evolves

with proud posture, strong shoulders

full breast and hips

her face framed in flowing waves

of shoulder length hair

 

hours pass, my hands manipulate

warm clay on the modelling stand

the sculpture progresses

without awareness of time

I move to the face, expressive lips,

smooth the eyebrow line

with a curved tool, then the eyes

 

step back in surprise; her bold gaze

directed out to me from the clay

with an intensity of perception;

an unexpected sensation of life

 

her lips turned up at the corners

in a half smile, or is it a question;

the channeling of a woman

I do not know

a personality evolved

not of my own intellectual intent

 

a transference

from warm hands into the form

of a restless ghost

from out the constellation

demanding to manifest?

 

or in the expression

is there kin to an apparition

of my own spirit,

part of the unacknowledged self

forcing attention.

 

Finished I leave the studio for the day

come back the next

with a thought to solve the mystery

 

she stands there

determined, a firm resolve;

the answer still elusive

 

and will take a longer study

to decipher.