Ellen McKay

The Turn

Early march, late afternoon.
The fog hangs low over the fields:
white over white.
Oak, beech and spruce rise
out of nothingness.
Silence but for the sound
of water running in the gullies.

I inhale--what pleasure, the cool air!
My breath: steam mingling with steam.
Almost blind in all this softness
I move slowly
so as not to miss the turn in the road.


This Chimera

Cotton river viewers
On a trip
previous boisterous threads
The works tell when a lake is
blue.
Cool and aloof
         Lights inside
                  Right angles a sense

Slightly wavering
Gray.
Yellow. On
High
speeds
         the hike the swim.
Seemed arrhythmic
In spirit clipped teal
On the edge A pathway
At the top of a range
Home was in
this Chimera
the pursuit
         furrows and waves
rescue.


The Ding

Tempered bronze,
verdigris of ages,
turquoise vernacular
as vessel
for the sacred meal,
we all share

growth rings. Radiate
minute by minute a torrent,
our centuries woven in The Isles of
The Blessed between
and through and through
the vanishing isles

black ash bark charcoal
scarlet lineage illusion
At last a real
shoe print in the mud.
She was here just now,
The rain still coming

sheets on the clothesline
Spring idiom. Tender filigree,
yellow vibrato, green starburst
transmit the inevitable
we all are
mere vermilion
mist new leaves distant hillsides.

Light:
the cerulean fuse.


About the Author

Born in New York City, I am a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. My studies in poetry include workshops with Jean Valentine, NY. NY, Robert Bly at the Conference of the Great Mother and New Father in Maine, Robert Haas at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College, with John Montague at SUNY, Albany.

I have given poetry readings at various venues in the Hudson River Valley, such as the Kinderhook Library, Kinderhook, NY as part of the Community Voice Series sponsored by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild and the New York State Writers Institute.

I have been a member of various poetry groups such the Woodstock Library Poetry group with Susan Sindall and The Kinderhook Library Poetry Group with Craig Hancock.

My poetry has been published in journals, Blue Sofa, Nightsun and Upstream Downstream. I have written art reviews for Chronogram.
As painter and poet, I participated in the conference, “Where Language Meets Form” at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.
As educator, my workshops, Experiments In Spontaneity and Central Image offer a unique approach to abstract painting, which often includes writing poems.

Recently my poems are taking a turn towards the abstract which surprises and pleases me, as I am an abstract painter who delights in liminal moment, where abstract and figurative meet and dialogue occurs between paintings and poems.

(click here to close this window)