
Silent reflection
©️ Amanda Reilly Sayer
Meditation you might say
Hear your heart whisper

Silent reflection
©️ Amanda Reilly Sayer
Meditation you might say
Hear your heart whisper

Windswept winter dunes
©️Amanda Reilly Sayer
Infinite ebb and flow tides
You can start anew

To be is enough
©️ Amanda Reilly Sayer
Put down your expectations
Watch your world transform

Release your grip on
©️ Amanda Reilly Sayer
Memories, good ones and bad
Simply past ideas

Humbling hindsight may
©️ Amanda Reilly Sayer
Fuel the habits of shame, so
Steady your grindstone

© Amanda Reilly Sayer
Fertile ground in dormant slumber
unmade bed of rusted green
Smoothed by winter’s coverlet
still, in silent preparation
Can you see beauty
in the skeleton tree lines?
The jubilation of up-stretched limbs?
Shadow crowns dance
over blankets of fresh snow
New canvas for angel wings
Can you find solace
in the sound of brittle steps?
The bite of frigid air?
Allow the earth to catch you
in buoyant powder
Feel the awakening kiss
on your bare neck

I kept looking, hoping to decide
©️ Amanda Reilly Sayer (December, 2018)
Wanting to understand how you changed
So different in the shifting light
Around you (and me)
Your soft edges, pastel tones
Transformed. Foreboding, gloomy
Then airy, overly subtle. Again.
Neither quite right, not fully you
Still, you had much to teach me
About preferences and contrast
Seeing and letting go
Both of us in transformation

Sometimes a painting changes. A lot. Although I never quite liked this painting in the early stages, I kept looking. As the surrounding light shifted, the painting did too. The images (directly above) represent my first draft and appear different only because they were photographed at different times of day.
Ultimately, I painted over most of the original. The final image is the result (pictured at the top), a very different painting for sure.
The poem is an ode to the making of the painting. But has broader applications too, I think. I’d love to hear what you think!
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