Monumental

A dusting of snow, a little more actually, a “frosting” maybe, has softened contours and homogenized distinctions. Transitions are subtle sketches, suggestions. Grade changes are shade shifts, shadows. Textures and contrasts are gentled, subsumed in white. And yet this whirl of steal flame, fragments flickering up from the snow, defies softening, homogenizing. This sculpture is more than art, more than artifact, and more than monumental placeholder for a dear friend — much loved, often braided into our Rosslyn years — who created and added this fluid form to our home. This sculpture is the physical incarnation of a poem.

I’ll take a precocious poke at poetry inspired by Ed Conlin’s sculpture. In snow. Reflecting monuments and monumental moments across our eighteen and a half years at Rosslyn… A work in progress. Heart and mind courting, dancing.

Monumental

for Ed Conlin

Snowless,
snowless,
snow
at last
but little,
just enough
to erase, no,
to almost erase
differences.
White space
interrupted
by a flicker
of torch cut
steel salvaged,
steel reimagined,
steel untethered
from service as
energy vessel or
vehicle skin or
exoskeleton or…
It matters
little now
that this 
ether licking
spirit burns
brown-black
with rust,
a monument 
to moments
muddled by
time’s tonic,
to aging aches
and consummate
coalescence. 
Burning,
burning. 
A monumental 
money pit, 
a monumental
marriage buster,
they said, they all said.
A monumental 
test of our resolve
and our endurance, 
a monumental
test of love, we said.
They we were right, and
we we were right, and
tonight, snow and all,
the flame flickers on
and on and on and…