Mandala

Nothing accepts periphery.
The green tease at the corner of the eye
insists on being the middle thing,
organizes and subordinates the field,
then yields to something browsing
the edge of vision, which is displaced
by a blackness flapping in the fence:
tree and cow and plastic bag,
then a sudden yellow at the wood line,
then a momentary flashing in the ditch.
Each posits an order, adumbrates a world,
or the mind does, anyway, waving
all the while its stiff shirt for attention,
starting small fires from debris.
Troped in green and brightness,
it is tree and field, everything,
content in its jealous immensity
but needing someone to notice it
and make it real.


The Center, by Neal Bowers


My creative interests tend to come in waves. For a time I will be intensely interested in something, and then after a time my attention will shift to something new. Right now it's clearly photography (and poetry). A couple of years ago it was yarn mandalas. I made a ton of them and now there are about a dozen hanging in our house. I'd still like to create the large, twelve-point masterpiece of my imagination. Maybe someday when I tire of photography (shortly after spending money I can't afford on a new camera, probably) I'll go back to messing with yarn. Or finish that board game I was inventing. Or do some more linoleum prints. Or play music. Or write. 

There's just not enough time to get it all in. Sometimes I envy people who have one thing they really devote themselves to and get satisfaction from for their whole life. I still have all sorts of ideas I've never even gotten around to.