Small Potatoes Moon

Small Potatoes Moon

Full Moon  June 14, 2022

channeling Joseph Beuys, the German conceptual artist who once said,
“The act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act.”

Any small part of the world
can sometimes enter as music
into a tender suchness
that belies explanation—
yesterday it was vanishing whitecaps
during a break in the marine layer
a murmuration of temporary dissonances
which formed a perfect circle
of water on the sky’s soul.

The sense that yes, death
is in every step
& peace is the gravity
urging us earthward—
that truly, truly
all is well & each small us
is welcome & beloved here
in this windblown garden tangle.

This maybe is the calamity
ego staves off at all costs:
that there is no disorder
to rearrange, no protection
from the disaster of turning together
in harmony with countless others—
our rainbow body
of small parts a passing radiance
in a bottomless eye.

Poem by Qayyum Johnson
Painting by Suiko McCall. Refined & Common Speech Come Together in the Dark, 2019. Ink on paper mounted on Birch panel, 18×12″ diptych.