A PARADE OF WONDERS*

When I revisit my parade of wonders I become anchored and focused.
Measuring the seasons, new growth, old friends.
This is where lines are written and scored--and paintings are laid out on the retina of the mind.
While other folks may pass by and be a part of this space, I claim it as my own.
The cedar growing from the spruce
The rock of sunning turtles
The pond of great bullfrogs
The tree of the barred owls
The sunlit arbor with hanging moss
The lover's bridge with huckleberries
The playground of laughing children
The field of determined moles
The daisies at the bench memorial
The reedy verge of wood ducks
The place of whispering cottonwoods
The tree-stumps red at sunset
The view we sometimes paint
The fungous musk of the fallen fir
The feral snapdragons of the old cabin
The ancient larch standing alone
The ever-running brook
A place can be quite ordinary and still be a special place. It's all in the eye of the beholder.
And shared history can magnify wonders - our children played and were painted on the great curved rocks that are now too overgrown to paint again.
Now the swings and teeter-totters are for someone else's tots.
With the naming and claiming that artists tend to do, there's a collection to be had.
Like the haiku of titled paintings, they are the labels of our lives.
By some miracle we are allowed on this path for a short while, and you can be sure when we are gone some like-minded ones will be there to take over.
*By Robert Genn (painter)