See the show! Buy the book!
It has been years in the making but Bartrams Boxes Remix opens this Friday, May 2nd at the Center for Art in Wood, 141 North 3rd Street in Philadelphia and continues through July 19, 2014. Check out an article about the exhibition which features over 20 artists, including yours truly with my art partner, Claire Owen, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Not in Philly this weekend? You can still buy Solace, the collection of my poems about the Bartrams and trees and journeys and storms and caretakers and...trying to find meaning in loss. See some of the poems and order the book published by Greenleaf Poetry Press here. Order now and your book will be lovingly inscribed by the poet!
- Beth Feldman Brandt, 2013
Hope to see you here or there. Philadelphia springtime is beautiful!
Bartram’s Boxes
We travel at risk of health and untold loneliness
to uncover what has been seen only by Creek
or crocodile among the brambles.
How we love each fruit or flower for its singularity,
the way we love a wife’s touch, a son’s quick mind,
a daughter’s attentiveness.
Ours is the commerce of curiosity, seeds gathered,
sifted, tenderly nestled in moss, until with sunlight
and breath, each will spark like tinder,
reveal its secret – beauty, fragrance, usefulness –
brilliant as sunset, dark as coffee, a balm –
sent to bloom across oceans like the children
who blossom in our absence.
We are men of science.
Men of faith.
This is our praise.
