The Artist Paints the Light
The light in Yosemite Valley lifts his mind
to the height of granite cliffs and
there he is, next to a black oak,
trunk a solid soldier ready to ascend
with him into the impossible ether.
His vision rises to the topmost leaves,
shares the compulsion
to merge with unadulterated light,
how it rushes out of blue and white
to slather them into the actuality it will
become. He understands that, even
though light seems, to the static,
the most desirable of existences,
light itself longs to be leaf, petal,
eyelash, eye that sees.
"Looking up the Yosemite Valley"
Albert Bierstadt, 1863
This is just wonderful.
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