Cobweb - Tom Hundersmarck

Mixed Media
36" x 56"
 
cobwebs
J. Nishida
 
honest answers take too long     
 
better casual flingings
instant cobwebs, not even cobwebs
from never-woven strands—
they float away, leaving every corner
clean—
 
even denotation weighs too heavily
forget connoting, forget subtext, shading, hint and wind, the artistry of weaving
forget riddle—
 
quick-illustrate—
hiccup an emoji
a like, a smiley face, a frown
LOL or OMG—
we’ve misplaced time
and meaning
somewhere in the mildew under the sink
or green-fuzzed in fridge?
perhaps in pantry
behind the instant rice
the cup-o-soup
the freeze-dried coffee—
 
hurry! hurry!
or you’ll  miss  that
meme—
it’s a joke
(an old one)
cut-and-pasted on a still
from a second-rate remake, film
plot stolen from a not-bad older movie
rewritten by some studio slave
back in the day
from a pretty good play
adapted from a novel, now forgotten
based on an old-world fairy tale
once illustrated
well before the turn of some gone century
by the thousand mindful cuttings of the woodblock artist
in workshop
silent, but for low humming
and the sounds carried in by the breeze
and the scratch-scratch-scratch of carving—
 
a thousand mindful prods and delvings—
leave space for both sky and substance—
what stays will be the wet and color and press and dry and line and play
of slow gaze over page—
 
the wood, sweat-huffed shocks of chop and shape
had fallen on a much earlier day—
old cherry tree
orchard planted, tended, handed down from grand-to-grand-to-grand—
wood long-seasoned, planed
sanded, planned—
 
penetrate—
think right to left instead of left to right, reflect 
think what goes deep will be  what isn’t   lines most obviously laid
on the surface of things—
 
and substance—
curls of wood and dust 
caught in breeze—
sift and light
on the surface of things—
floor and brow and lips and hands  and
 
on still-thick sticky strands
of webs of living spinners, ever weaving and reweaving
 
to illustrate 
the reach
and the lines between the gaps
and the spaces
in the corners of things
 
they cling
even when the weavers are long since dead—