Look Below, 2023

 👁️ Look Below 👁️

For artist Leonard Jubenville, on the occasion of his life’s retrospective exhibition, ‘What Lies Beneath’, Thames Art Gallery (January, 2023).

Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full. 

 

Absorbed beneath the visible, sheen of this evolving floe 

Genesis of new life, labouring dark and birthing light. 

Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full. 

 

A river bank, a complex womb, forging, feeding  

through the opaque gloom.  

Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full. 

 

Beneath green pears, lie limpid brown; ripening fruit and Summer’s down. 

Sun-dried laundry covers warm, moist soap scented of the foundry’s mint. 

Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full. 

 

Fall leaves foster fresh new shoots - amaryllis, gladioli  

and velvet suits.  

Across the furrowed fields evolve, the living gestating resolve. 

Look below and see the glow, workings of a world rich and full. 

 

Seams left on a marble snowscape, guide us to our Winter’s feed. 

As it is, beneath the surface, in all dark patches of our sphere –  

everything important lies below the toiling gloss of rich and full.