1991 Emily Dickinson Series

I was given a wood craving set...began drawing with the marks on these 24 x 24 inch plywood panels and coloring with oil pastel...matched each with an Emily Dickinson poem.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain.

I found the phrase to every thought

I ever had, but one;

And that defies me---as a hand

Did try to chalk the sun

To races nurtured in the dark;

How would your own begin?

Can blaze be done in cochineal,

Or noon in mazarin?

I taste a liquor never brewed;

From tankards scooped in pearl,

Not all the vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I

And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,

From inns of molten blue

When landlords turn the drunken bee

Out of the foxglove's door.

When butterflies renounce their drams,

I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,

And saints to windows run,

To see the little tippler

Leaning against the sun!

The nearest dream recedes, unrealized.

The heaven we chase

Like the June bee

Before the school-boy

Invites the race; Stops to an easy clover---

Dips---evades---teases---deploys;

Then to the royal clouds

lifts his light pinnacle

Heedless of the boy

Staring, bewildered, at the mocking sky.

Homesick for steadfast honey,

Ah! the bee flies not

That brews that rare variety.