Artist Statement for Silver Shoes, 2010.
to arrive to where I was born
simultaneously with sister’s fruit
aflight on wings of silver shoes
tiny feet of mercury
dance with sunflares
circumambulate with urgency
a never-ending cycle
this fascination with light
outstretched through tree branches
particles dangle toes in cold creek water
hands carry stolen light through toxic fluids
through darkness
making sense of the process
of rude snow confusing robins
of a turtle crushed by a school bus
a limb crushed by a tractor
a door used as a gurney
bearing the weight of my grandfather
heavy as a son’s grief
I’m holding my history beneath this water
collections of dust
a pile of planks that was once a house
a hundred kitchen chickens
a shelf of ancestral tools
preserved for examination
a record of life
of everything in cycles
my mortality evidenced
in these rituals
walking through fields of ashes
we are all sensitive to light
each spring dead grass is burned away
all things return to their place of origin
