Festival

by Ashley Mace Havird

I watched my small daughter’s hands 

plunge into jars of paint on sheets 

that covered the kitchen floor. She was two.

Play of color, surprise of shape and motion …

She made a dance of red, blue, green, 

transformed the sheets, her face, her body. 

And I thought of the hands of ancient cave painters,

hands palpating stone to life.

Before play, there was no art.

Not children but, still, children of the species.

Eyes fresh enough to see raw beauty

in the skills of antlers, fangs, wings, claws. 

In season the woods and grasslands grew fat 

with horses and stags, cattle and bison. 

Season of strong days that lifted the sun, 

held it high and long. Season of births, 

a woman’s rounding with young.

Before clay made a pot, it formed a figure.

Eden Gardens Elementary. Art

with Mrs. Hackenberg, where my child grasped 

texture, tone, pattern. With brush and paint 

formed what she alone saw. A tree leafing

stars into a purple sky. The rust-red river 

of the city a snake with flamelike tongue. 

Self-portrait: straight brown hair and bangs, 

shorts and cowboy boots. Inside the box 

of her chest, her heart the yellow shape 

of a dog, our dog who died. 

Before dog was guard or hunter, it was playmate.

For the painters of the walls of Lascaux,

Altamira, Niaux, Chauvet, play 

was prayer made visible. Into these caves, 

arteries that fed the deep beating heart 

of the earth, they spirited the sacred animals. 

Torchlight enlivened them. 

Stampede of bulls, horses at a gallop, 

keen-eyed lions on the hunt. Such magic

in the story, the dance, the song.  

Before the bow became weapon, it made music.