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ENGRAINED

For all trees everywhere...

ENGRAINED Reflections on Trees in Poetry & Art

MARIETTA PATRICIA LEIS

INTRODUCTION The language of trees has to be learned; it is a language of wonder, stillness and reverence. Forests affect the lives of everyone even unknowingly. These works present the beauty, activities and ecology of forests as well the reality of their fragility and exploitation. - MPL

ENGRAINED

Tree Oh majestic tree how safe I feel hugging your stable trunk Although you tower over me you protect my soul from unbelieving

Careful to look up not always at my feet Up to the trees paying homage to my elders

Spring is a paintbrush using all fresh colors, greens of every hue for trees to have new clothes

Love your exquisite vertical form that like a bellows emits the air enabling me to breathe and live

What a contrast as I step into your embrace on a sweltering day You cool my body, soothe my soul relief

Fragrance, shade, food, beauty How many things this lover brings How can we turn away or worse not even notice the bounty offered

Do trees cry when wounded with man’s cut? Is a clear cut forest a Greek chorus? A mournful weight for Earth to endure

Green is the vibrant color of the Earth still living and forgiving

Evident Injuries Looking at your tree trunk I admire its intricate beauty I realize that the skin reveals your life The scars tell the story with the twists and knots reciting your journey When you were hurt changed paths, weathered a storm or experienced a fire It is all written I embrace your history feeling I know you better in an intimate soul way

Peacefully now the reflected trees mirror green and mysterious in the lake’s last light

Measuring yourself by the height of a growing tree? It is a runt now and you arrogant When its roots take hold and it shoots up you’re left behind but with riches of beauty A lost race feeling good

A vertical land standing tall the woods providing warmth and protection For all God’s creatures including the two footed ones Like me

Bowing to the miracle a leaf inspires

Silhouettes of treetops framing the stars of night Picture perfect

Wonder Breathless beauty bountiful pleasures You dazzle Nothing static responding to all others Leaves, sunshine, water they are the same You provide Tasting the sweetness of nature Green, a subtext whose armature supports life You nurture Stand among your friends that care Lift to the rays of light bow to drink Earth’s milk You inspire With regeneration and rebirth

The green carpet, green overhang, a green surround Earth’s pillow allowing us to rest

Where will sustenance and refuge come without the mother of green hair and dress

You work with intense focus Healing the Gulf of Mexico dead zone And the parched African lands Your spirit applauded

Of all the wrong choices I have made and ill-advised actions I have executed I don’t think I ever abused a tree except perhaps by not noticing

Lessons to learn for human communities Trees support and nurture each other They are in a relationship Enviable

Yes I talk to trees. Why not? They are loyal friends and we are in symbiotic relationship Although I truthfully seem to reap more But they kindly are patient that I will learn

Trees The lovely ladies of the Nordic woods have been threatened but stand tall with their brethren Gracefully swaying lending shade, rhythm and continuity to a countryside often in conflict Their courage and beauty inspires us lesser creatures to echo their elegance

Trees compacted In full forests Then edited to a few Then none except on flat beds

Green is the color of $ The growing of wealth and fortune Acquisition Taking and making

Remember to put our hands in the soil to forget that touch is to forget all

Converging so perfectly Earth’s plan fulfilled Where do we begin and you end?

Green Look beyond the concrete and black top Unlock your memories and look to the original world Trees and plants in silence grow bringing forth their splendor for our wordless wonder We linger with you among Earth’s soil Not wanting to be apart from your green caress But careless not seeing the bounty brought forth Shall we not know the Earth for we are tree and fruit And vegetable ourselves Are we divorced from our family orphaned and lost with limbs torn off?

Have I told you what your beauty means to me? Your form, your grace, your elegance. I’m startled as I come upon you and fall to my knees in praise

Verdant symphony of elegant chords reflecting a life force of grace

The wind is fierce meeting its challenge trunks are made stronger

Green dressed estate Budding seeds unfolding

The language of trees has to be learned It is one of wonder Stay still and listen Reverence

Trees in silence grow birthing their splendor for our wordless wonder

I would rather have a tree’s shade cool me than a mechanism that cools the air but endangers our planet Besides we are friends

Verdant paradiso All ripe and ready to spring forth and love

Green whose armature supports life You nurture

The forest doesn’t need me It exists will it persist?

We linger with you among Earth’s soil Not wanting to be apart from your green caress

Reflections of heart leaves outstretched offering peace

A season to grow Another to reflect

Marietta Patricia Leis: Engrained

In the course of a long career that has taken her from New York to Los Angeles and finally to Albuquerque, NM, Marietta Patricia Leis has mastered just about any medium at her disposal—printmaking, sculpture, painting, video, poetry and photography. Her subjects have often been inspired by her travels worldwide: to Antarctica, Southeast Asia, Greece, Iceland, and other far-flung spots. The experiences she gathers from place, whether it’s the humid green of the tropical jungle or the billowing clouds and black-velvet nights of the Scottish Highlands, become distilled into the different series she’s pursued over the years. The common thread is that Leis brings to all her work qualities of elegant understatement, a thorough knowledge of craft, and an approach that marries thoughtful restraint with a sensuous feel for her materials. For Engrained Leis found inspiration quite literally in her own backyard, when a 30-foot-high spruce tree on her property in Albuquerque, NM, died shortly after she moved in. Parts of that tree have made their way into her Engrained visual art series. This work seems to juxtapose the living against the dead, and speaks to the possibilities for renewal and rebirth. Specific trees may have provided the inspiration for many of her works, but Leis’ travels—and her self-description as an “outed tree hugger”—have made her sensitive to the plight of trees in general. She’s flown over the Amazon and witnessed the burning of rain forests; she’s seen firsthand Iceland’s barren landscape, the result of devastation by early settlers; and, like the rest of us, she’s concerned about the clear cutting, wild fires, and deforestation that are quickly eroding our landscapes.

Despite the tenuousness of nature, Leis’ works are also reminders of how much pleasure we get from the colors, textures, and presence of those mute and stalwart citizens who share our planet. In examining all the qualities of “treeness”—from seeds and leaves to the battered husk that remains after a tree dies—Leis gives us tangible proof of the loveliness of these silent gifts of nature along with intimations of how barren our world would be without them. - Ann Landi Ann Landi is the founder and editor of Vasari21.com and a contributing editor of ARTnews.

Marietta Patricia Leis is an internationally exhibiting multimedia artist and poet based in New Mexico. Leis’ reductive, expressive visual practice is shaped out of experiments in material process and takes inspiration from the forms of nature, sense of place, & the internal landscape. Her writing has been published and read worldwide, and often takes the form of free verse poetry & haiku. These personal writings reflect her inner meditations and relationships to nature and art.

Acknowledgments Special thanks to: Ann Landi, Mary Dezember & Patricia Watts for their writings & commentary David Vogel, my husband, for his unconditional support, keen eye, love & traveling companionship The Charles and Edwina Milner Women in the Arts Award, McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art, WNMU, for inviting me to stretch my visual ideas of trees and forests Stefan Jennings Batista, designer, photographer & best ever studio assistant, for his keen understanding of my intentions Ermelinda Fiore Napoliello, my grandmother, for instilling in me a visceral love of the natural world Marietta’s work can be found at: www.mariettaleis.com Her book Pausing, Reflections in Poems & Art can be found on www.amazon.com

Book design & layout by Stefan Jennings Batista

The images in this book are adapted from the author’s original artworks in painting, woodcut printing, cyanotype & photography.