Lying Awake. Details
The first and last lithograph in the series incorporates text, taken from the notebooks, in and over the image. I add the full poems.
HARVEST ME
Harvest me.
When I'm dead or dying,
harvest me.
Like a peasant
that picks the tubers
from a dry patch of land.
Plunder me and give me to the poor.
To the drunks and the addicts
the liver, the kidneys.
Peel back the skin and
gather the tissues.
Scoop out my heart
and collect all my bones.
The lame will be walking
the blind will see.
But don’t touch my soul.
Promise you won’t touch my soul.
I want it set free,
released from its tethers.
By the time that
I am dead or dying
my soul will be ready for flight.
Herlinde Spahr
THE QUIVERING BOARD
Don't think that the heavens don't look down on us,
a world of roots, of girth, the apple's downward fall.
They wait and wait and listen with care,
so rare is the sound that travels up high.
Like the diver on his springboard
bearing down with all his weight
to become weightless, breathless at the apex,
a soul of muscle in thin air.
The gods don't know how close we've come.
They only hear the quivering board,
the splash when bodies
come back down to earth.
Herlinde Spahr
