In the same space of time during which this poem was selected, I was deep in the act of purging old works from my portfolio; a process which was as emotionally taxing as it was expedient. At the heart of these old works were stories and images of my family’s farm and its ancestral “red-sided, white trimmed, gambrel-roofed barn”. I’m not usually one for serendipity, although I am perhaps one for sentimentality. As such, this was a coincidence too close and too deeply tied to ignore. As an artist familiar with the depiction of opposites, the representation of the unseen, and the duplicitous world of time and metaphor, I lunged at this poem with ink, wood and tool. My heart lay in my throat as I carved anew the essence of my works long past, purged from my archives, burned from existence. And yet, born again; a phenix of inspiration from the ashes.
