Art Lesson: Perspectives Poem by Roger elkin

</>Art Lesson: Perspectives

Close up your eyes, clear out your mind,
think of nothing but blank space…

Examine that space.

Open your mind, open your eyes.
Then pick up a pen.

Draw a sky
empty of everything except its blue:
You can’t? I’ll help you.
There’s oodles of sky.

Draw a tree
free of its leaves in winter.
Come on, that’s an easy matter.
There’s masses of tree.

Draw a hill
no detail except the outline.
Can’t? I’ll do it for you, yet again.
There’s mountains of hill.

Now line them up, one top of the other:
naked tree fitting bare hill fitting empty sky.
I guarantee it’s really very simple;
I’ve given you plenty of example.

Just for a change, think in reverse.
What do you see as an aerial plan
when you place them upside down?
Wide sea, spread delta, eroded coast.

That is how the life of the tree
life of the hill
life of the moor
life of the soil
life of the earth
life of the world
life of the sky
slowly spill into the wide universe.