#123 Yellow Flowers :: the collaborative art of joel and deborah cooper

#123 Yellow Flowers
2009 – 11 x 17 – edition of 22 – $450

Picturesque Glendalough, tucked in the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin. An artist could spend their whole career in this area and never run out of images that excite.

Yellow Flowers
All winter, the winds rage
across the hills

thrash at the cottage
where she tosses
in the quilts

rising in the dark
to feed the peat-fire

passing the days with the weight
of a cold, dark stone

in the center of her chest,
the accumulation of sorrows.
The weeks crawl by.

But now today,
beneath the breeze-swept
clouds and trees

the yellow flowers
are opening their faces
a throng of tiny trumpets
blaring Spring

a galaxy of fallen stars.

For eighty years, she’s watched
these flowers shine
in their brief season

and felt each time this small, familiar
half-forgotten
shock of joy.