Nearly complete, this painting: And its charms have a punch. And its hunches have arms. can be viewed as it progresses at this link.
Oil on Canvas, 3.5 feet x 9 feet, 2013.

The luscious Heather McHugh poem from which the title is derived is below.

A Blind

A blind of green
cedar, the branches cut just
at the changing of bands
(wood for wind, frond for trill,
logistics for lizard, scale for scale –

because the lineages
love Linnaeus, he’s the
rex’s lex), which leaves ourselves

an eyehole for the world,
after the weaving of one
over the other and other
on one. Once it’s built
it’s a blind

sort of date. It’s a nest with a mind
for a critter inside. And its charms
have a punch. And its hunches
have arms.

I saw it clearly then
at seven, in a Wollworth’s floral aisle,
an aisle of plastic greenery, the moment that
the momentary struck me. There I stood
stock-still and swore

I’d never let it
leave my mind, I’d
nail it once and for all.
I grasped what I was

in the clutches of – a species
of unkindness, beating
at the brow. From then on,
then would have to be

forever know as now.

Thank you to Heather McHugh and Copper Canyon Press for allowing me to publish the poem.

Upgraded to Serious

Copper Canyon Press 2009