For me, art is comfort, art is therapy, art is soul-saving. This page features some of my artwork & poetry created during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Available now!
The fourth volume in the Naked In Wonderland series of original poetry & artwork
by Alys Caviness-Gober
(coming soon: Volume Five!)
The fourth volume in the Naked In Wonderland series of original poetry & artwork
by Alys Caviness-Gober
(coming soon: Volume Five!)
 Spring Bloom 2020 (digital art ©ACG)
Spring Bloom 2020 Each year, at a safe distance, through my windows, with discontent and yearning, I watch the first signs of Spring. First, a cluster of little white flowers with small spreckles of oranges and yellows push up through Winter’s gray-brown debris-ridden soil and slowly spread; then a hard green frond of what will soon be the first tall yellow daffodil, rising strong like a standard-bearer waving the brightest flag in battle. Then comes dozens of tiny bloodred clusters amidst the first greens of my roses. All these blooms, the first beauties of Spring. So brave, they forge the way for their late-blooming brethren, and always seem incredibly vulnerable to the last of Winter’s icy grasp. This year’s Spring bloom is novel, like a new story, it burst forth with invisible white-gray clusters sprouted with bloodred blossoms and even smaller orange and yellow spreckles, and it spread wildly insidiously moving swiftly adapting readapting deadly striking down our most vulnerable brethren, but soon we know all are at risk. At first, some of us scoffed, faith-based believers ironically not believing in something they couldn’t see, even when numbers came in from China and Italy and other stricken places, but then suddenly it was here, and our numbers grew; a question haunts our minds, can this really be happening? We watch from windows whispering to ourselves unfamiliar phrases like social distancing, sheltering in place, and handwashing (handwashing’s not something we usually say out loud) but now reminding each other, warning each other, meme-ing each other, we’re washing our hands obsessively, and practice six feet of social distancing, guidelines from WHO (World Health Organization) and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) ~ when have those rolled off our tongues?? and we’re sheltering hiding sheltering in place. This year’s Spring bloom is global; one by one entire countries shut down ~ shut down for god’s sake (can this really be happening?) we’re in isolation; fear-induced paralysis, we cannot even whisper things like quarantine closed for the foreseeable future because this year’s crop includes slowly spreading economic instability creeps across us, hard fronds, to hold what will be massive job losses, rise up as if held by a weakened standard-bearer waving our tattered flag above a silent battlefield; as the invasion of our invisible gray and bloodred Enemy continues spreading, always spreading. These blooms are not the first beauties of Spring. This year's Spring bloom is an unsettling gray-brown debris-ridden time, a time of free-fall and chaos, and for most, there is no precedence for it within our lifetimes. I’ve always lived in partial isolation with my disabilities and chronic illnesses; I’m one amongst the vulnerable, and as this year’s Spring blooms, I watch from my window, for once content behind the glass. ©ACG 21 March 2020 
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Wandering
walking at night wandering along streets familiar, yet like everything familiar now the streets feel like strangers, and in my quite world along these darkened empty streets, walking at night becomes new ©ACG Lines A song I used to sing haunts my frozen memory and in the torrents of rainfall beyond my window run the blurred faces of loved ones far away. I push aside my cobwebbed fears then remember: cobwebs glisten like diamonds in sunlight after rain. ©ACG Sleepless In Quarantine In a whirlpool of darkness, swirling, a composition, mired in this odd exhaustion born of terror and tedium and turmoil, birthed by discord and doubt and the paralyzing grip of cognitive repetition this is life and death this is life or death this is life and death this is life or death like floodwaters creeping up and seeping in or a chalice of desolation overflowing, becomes an eerie blurring cacophony; this nocturne’s dissonant notes pound out isolation’s senseless lonesomeness, echoing within this chasm of ever-deepening emptiness, and sleep eludes. ©ACG For Mom Mother’s Day 2020 I see you everywhere, especially in your trees, I feel you everywhere wafting on a soft Summer breeze, like the gentle one that blew the day you flew away; then and now, I feel your loving embrace across eternity I close my eyes and feel your kiss upon my cheek. ©ACG
Dead Calm Power’s out again tonight; there’s no hum of electrical vibrations singing their unrelenting comforting lullaby; no little (night-) light of mine shines; TV’s flickering glow has faded to a black as obscure as the moonless views out my glass darkly windows; there’s no air stirring, no artificial breezes blow, brought on not by nature but by air conditioning and overhead fans. Slowly my eyes and ears descend into the in between; silence merges with murmurs from just beyond, and shadows lean upon shadows. When the power’s out at night, I sit alone, like a ship dead calm on a glassy sea, waiting, waiting to hear them waiting to see them. ©ACG Summer’s Sizzle Can you hear it? The gentle sound of leaves kissing each other, branches dancing, as summertime’s breeze plays soft music for them. Can you hear it? Floating shouts and laughter, children playing, bonding in the splash of summertime’s poolside friendships. Can you hear it? The clink of drinks and music and low murmurs, gatherings in the dusk on manicured grass, backyard barbeques expanding outward into the air. Can’t you hear it? I can’t breathe. ©ACG 
America (original photograph ©ACG)
Ain’t It Grand? Yesterday, thick summer rain fell hard and fast and straight down, slicing through July’s humid air like that hot knife through butter, as thunder rolled overhead in waves of booming cracks, like the sky split open, and then rhythmic aftershocks rumbled above my roof, and rain, like machetes descending, wild and so sharp and sudden, mushing down my beleaguered roses, crushed underfoot as if by some invisible giant striding past and fast towards some other battle, slicing sickly branches from my trees, anticipating destruction and victory, and I thought, ain’t it grand? just because I’m still here. ©ACG Poetry Society of Indiana (PSI) Annual Poetry Contest 2020 PSI Grand Prize Category Honorable Mention: Ain't It Grand? |