You may know that in addition to my artwork I also write poetry (posted on my blog Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That?). For the next several months I will be posting here a combined art/poetry project, Large Artist Sketchbook 2020.

I fill up sketchbooks with all kinds of art. Some contain images only and some of them I use the images as inspiration for poetry. In these books the image is on one page of the spread and the poetry on the other. This book is set up in this manner.

I’ll show you the image and then add the poem that goes with it. See what you think.

Homesick

Another one of those lurid red
awful hot days and when
the first blotches of rain hit the glass
Splot. A dull tapping sound
but in a squishy kind of spread out way
if you know what I mean
Splot.
I jumped back away from the window
We get them like that sometimes
I’m still getting used to it
Things are so different here
from how they were at home

One blotch and then another
bled down the smooth surface
rivulets of plum-dark purple-red
sudden memory prisms
for the scene I saw once again
but never through this window:

a brown and gray yard
back there back when back then
I saw the bare black trees
glossed clear slick and shiny
with the downpour
I saw the heavy clouds that pressed down
I felt the overcast sky enclosing my house
safe and kind. I heard the raindrops
in their small bright spatter of sound
like straight pins landing on a metal table
silver-clear lenses
each presenting a tiny view of
home

I did not cry.
Not again.

2/21/20
Large Artist Sketchbook 2020 image 6