Coexistence and Staying Golden
from winter into spring
Nature — Where Nothing Gold Stays
This nature art was created yesterday in my backyard, on the ancestral land of four tribes: the Wichita, Caddo, Comanche and Cherokee People. Yesterday was the first non-rainy day of Spring where I live. I often walk the neighborhood, picking up scraps of wood, broken shards of pottery, interesting leaves, flowers and sticks. Sometimes I even save them for days — or through a season, as I do the Sugargum’s “spike balls,” the leftover yucca pods from summer’s faded red stalks, and always the dandelions. I love color — the vibrancy that each of nature’s creatures emits. When I created this impermanent piece of art, I was thinking about Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” and how it was one of my favorite quotes as a young teen when I first voraciously read (and re-read dozens of times) S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders: “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” I heard, as I placed the fragile golden leaves of winter at the top of my “Coexistence” creation of spring peeking through winter.
This altar, acknowledging Spring’s arrival, was built on top of wood — a piece of my neighbor’s cut tree from a few weeks ago, another reminder that nothing gold will stay.
