Vicki Gunter
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We all live with loss. We experience it personally and socially.
The following 10 poems and stories all relate to ceramic sculptures in the Loss Series. For Loss Ceramic Gallery click here.

Loss

Loss is a bright shard -
It flies at you unexpected
torn from an infinite dark
Darkness that rocks
back
and forth
as far as you can remember...
lined with breathing cliffs
warm - soft
ancient
marooned
red


Loss 1 - Shadow

The death of the family dog, Shadow, on a hot summer’s day pushed the first abstract image into clay and metal.
Other images and experiences of loss then flooded into poetry and form.
I tried to stay true to my feeling of loss as pieces torn away and disconnected.

Haipu



My dog and I walk

See cow pie and butterfly

Which one is beauty?

Picture


Loss 2 - Grandma Grandpa - The Farm

I spent many glorious summers on my grandparents farm as a child. My grandpa wore overalls daily
and when I sat on his lap I always heard the comforting sound of his pocket watch ticking.
My grandma was a master gardener and was as beautiful as her flowers.


Menopause

It was always early summer
when I visited the farm.
        I ate cherries endlessly,
        spitting their pits into Grandma’s
        furrowed rich garden soil.
The swing creaked under a burgeoning bacchanal
of arbored green grapes
each bunch graced with tendrils of cherubic curls.
        My hands were blood red raspberries
        Never could resist them
        No matter what grandpa said.
Garden paths heady
with rose, lilac and mystery scents
led through chickens
that scattered like mercury
        on their way to the hay and manure of the barn…
        thick clouds of white wool
        billowed away from Grandpa’s sheep shears.
I was nine and I was thirsty
I grabbed the blue screen door
leapt into the kitchen
        and there she was…
        my Grandma
        butt naked
        Botticelli-beautiful
One
pubic hair
        She gasped
        darted behind the cold, white fridge
        Ashamed
Why was she hiding
such beauty?   
I couldn’t understand it…

        Now I can
        squinting at these memories
        through my blue readers
But that glimpse gave me spring
And I swoon at the scent of my Freesias
that nod, “Botticelli-beautiful”
as I pass…


© Vicki Gunter, spring, 2004

Dedicated to Addie Smets, my grandma,

and Evangel King for the creative watershed.

Picture


Loss 3 - Mom's Metamorphosis

I read In The Lettuce to my mother as she lay in a hospital bed with a tracheotomy, unable to speak...seemingly unaware. When I finished reading the poem she squeezed my hand. It was the last communication we ever had.

The day after she died my sister and I called each other up and we both said, “I just had the most amazing experience! I was standing in the backyard and a Swallowtail butterfly came and visited me and it felt like it was MOM!”

In The Lettuce


Life is motion…

waves of motion.

The rolling, swollen hills --
their ancient heaving history,
the macrocosm mother of
river rock and
beach sand.

Black holes, bending space,
pulling moons,
eggs,
wriggling sperm…
the rolling, swollen belly.

The ocean swells fertile
with looping worms, fish,
and sensually whipping seaweed.

The waves never stop.
Always looking for an anchor, a container.
Up and down, side to side, in and out.

The meandering path of salamanders,
sticky frog fingers and
snaky meadow creeks broaden into verdant pools,
swarming with egg sacs and pollywogs.

The lizard’s scales inch against the granite
and slither to a stop-
waiting, listening, looking-
devouring the moment,
before a mammal leaps, eating the memory of itself.

Waves undulate in the seas,
against the stream bed’s mud,
eddy off the tongue toward the spiraling cochlea,
radio, telephone, television, tell tale telemetry of telepathy,
cast by the wind against fresh sailing sheets on the hill,
where gravity plays with a child’s rubber ball.

The coffee swirls with the cream.
The steam curls out of the cup,
the molecules waft past her swaying cilia,
mixing with the breakfast berries,
all riding their peristaltic wave.

Her flowing hair turns against
the curve of her neck,
down her spine, arching and rolling
as she reaches for the morning paper.

Her brain waves remember,
erotic undulations,
a rolling country road,
the inchworm in the lettuce
she washed the night before.

And somewhere by the licking flames of a campfire
the design of his breath condenses into heat waves
with every flicker of his pulse.

Life is motion…

waves of motion

waking,
wandering,
to the next…            


©Vicki Gunter 2002
Poem, choreography and performance commissioned

by Professor Norman Austin and University of Arizona

Picture

Loss 4 - Daddy "Tuolumne or Bust"


Two years after my mom’s death and the wonderful Swallowtail butterfly experience, my father “hit the trail” at 5am — his usual waking time to build a backpacking breakfast fire and watch the sun rise.

That same morning a Turkey Vulture skimmed past our windshield at close range. My sister and I whooped, “Whoa, was that dad?”

Some people value vultures as birds of peace because they never kill. My father did like to explore and sample a bit of everything. He was also powerfully peaceful.

When he died, he was holding a granite rock from Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, with the knowledge that his ashes would be scattered there.
Picture

Loss 5 - Where are My...?


Glasses...
Glasses...
Presbyopia
Where are my...
Glasses.
A pair in every room
but where are my...

Two moons
Epithelial
Basement
Membrane
Dystrophy

Where is my...
Vision?

© Vicki Gunter - 2012

Picture

Loss 6 - Wildlands ...by a thread


Our bodies, the earth and all life on it are primarily composed of water and "clay".

Clay has a memory.

Our Bodies have a memory.

Both are imprinted by the way they are held in the hand.

Our earth has a memory and responds to our manipulations
                                                               
Let's remember and learn how to live
                                                               
leaving the smallest fingerprint.

                                                               
     © Vicki Gunter - 2012
Picture

Loss 7 - Keys!

KEYS  


we got to  
remove
the reason  for the keys

oppression
obsession of possession

I went bowling with
Michael Moore
Canadians, he says,
don’ lock their door.

spread it aroun’ town
unlock the door
we don’ need those
keys no more

oppression
obsession of possession

the size of the lock
speaks the value of the stock

remove the reasons for the keys

you got so much stuff
you got to lock it down?
a calamity, insanity
the storage space profanity

slaves make people rich
and most people poor
spread it all aroun’
and unlock the door

the glaciers are a meltin’
the freeways freezin’ up
melt down the keys jam up the locks
lonely earth’ll be a laughin’
at yo’ worthless nas/dow stocks

oppression
obsession of possession

so, wink at your sista
wink at the sun
the synergy of energy
just let it run

live for life,  love and peace
unlock the reason for the keys

whose house nigga now whitey?
you and me?
unlock the reason for the keys

opporturnikey for you and me
unlock the reasons for the keys

oppression
obsession of possession

millions ’n’ millions o’
locksmiths ‘round the world
put ‘em out o’ business if we
feed the poor 
old
people in the closets,
cold on the streets
locked in the wards
teach ‘em all the logic

opporturnikey for you and me
remove the reason for the keys

oppression
obsession of possession

possession

obsession

obsession
remove the reasons for the keys

  

 
© Vicki Gunter
 September, 2003

Picture

Loss 8 - It's Not One Thing...It's Everything

Picture

The Headlines on the flag are all actual news headlines. They speak for themselves.

Click to read all of the Loss #8 - Headlines that are lithographed & fired onto the flag.


Loss 9 - Reflection


The Future Story

Reflect
Remember
Research
Change

               
Picture
© Vicki Gunter 2002-2012