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From the Mountain

A most personal exploration.

My great-grandmother was not the artist of her time, though I would not be in the feet of her standing. 

Her accomplishments, largely shadowed; but understood in my community. 

It gives me a thought, a reflection, to understand from the mountain stories when I was a child of the time when the mountain erupted. And I read once her sentiment of how nature wiped out a wolf that made it to the bank of the river.

I am the painter, reminder of the light force of nature.

Had me endure a year of isolated darkness like no other.

Carve every day, work in memory. 

Who we are–the place we know as ‘where the small water touches the open sea.’

I felt all the arms within my hands, the place you could not be.

And come out of there to the home we know as shelter.

Hands within my grips as cedars fall.

I know time is now different slivers and in my shoes all that I can accomplish are efforts of memory.

– Qwalsius-Shaun Peterson