'AUTUMN MORNING - FOOTHILLS OF THE SIERRAS' BY JACK WILKINSON SMITH(1873-1949)

A distant autumn on the foothills of the Sierra Nevada,

a dead hand captured the last of leafs, dying

in bright colours. A season passing,

a life passing. Look close

and see the brushwork. The hand that

held the brush but bones in the earth.

The colours - have they faded? Is

there still something of that autumn, the

leaves, the trees, the foothills and the distant mountains,

of the air and the mind that moved the hand that held the brush

in those colours? Is there something

that calls to us, that answers our questions,

that gives us a bridge to that long gone autumn,

to those days the brush made what the eye saw and

the brain interpreted, or

is just fading paint, a picture

of not of then but of now, what we

make of it, and no more? Like

these words I gave to you?

19.08.2018