Tuesday, October 18, 2005






Snow in Madrid

Softly so casual
Lovely so light
So light
The cruel sky lets fall something
One does not fight
Men, before perishing, see with unwounded eye for once
A gentle thing falls from the sky.


Joy Gresham

4 comments:

andrea said...

Both the sketch and the poem are spare and strong.

Aaron: I use Bloglines so require an RSS feed rather than XML, which I see you've added. However, I just added you to my blogroll, so will hopefully remember to keep track that way!

Aaron Paquette said...

Too much technology for me to navigate!

I downloaded an OpenSource feed browser (RSSOwl 1.1.3) that works for RSS, XML, and Atom if that helps for the future on other sites.

I'm brand new to all this so take my advice with salt. Lots of salt.

And thanks for the comment on the poem/watercolor. I first heard the poem while watching the CS Lewis bio, "Shadowlands". It's stayed with me ever since.

The painting is actually taken from a strange afternoon in Southern Alberta (an open land of vast, golden plains stretching out from an impossible wall of mountains to the west). This cloud of snow came rolling in out of nowhere on what was previously a cloud free day. It was so low, I could see it roiling inside itself as the edge passed over, and the day turned to night. The snow came and I was completely immersed in huge, wet flakes of snow swirling around me and quickly building up all over the landscape. I could just glimpse the outskirts of the storm in fits and pieces, hills and fields in the distance still bright and alive with the sun, while under this monster I was eaten alive with wind.

And then it was suddenly calm and I was in the middle of something so peaceful. The snow came softly, gently brushing past me like the dance of angels. Where all was dark, now the world was bathed in a pure light, seemingly coming from all around me.

As suddenly as it came, it passed, and the world was left covered in a new clean carpet of white, dazzling in the returning sunshine.

WildGoddess said...

Aaron,
"Snow" is exquisite! It simply raidiates the gentle majesty that is Alberta. You can give sketches away to me anytime! -- WildGoddess

Anonymous said...

I always thought the snow was white
and then I saw it blue one night
And then the next day it was green
with golden highlights seldom seen
and then this morning it was pink,
so now I don't know what to think...

D.