I love this poem by India DeCarmine and it inspired me to do this painting. In the painting Mrs. Paisley takes a break about half way up, to catch her breath and gaze at the moon. The painting is oil on canvas 36" x 36".
The Gift:
Wherein Mrs. Paisley
Rights One Wrong
of Her Misspent Youth
When Mrs. Paisley was a child
She wasn’t what you would call wild.
She never deigned to skin her knee,
Bake with mud or climb a tree.
In short, for all of her young age
(when beastly girls were all the rage),
her main aim was taking care
not to disarrange her hair.
Mrs. Paisley eyes an elm,
hitherto within the realm
of things she’d not meant to ascend.
Yet lately she’s discerned a trend
whereby categories shift.
With fine, long limbs, this tree’s a gift.
Mrs. Paisley’s not elastic,
and the angle is quite drastic
of that first limb. While she heaves
her butt up towards
the new spring leaves,
she thinks of neighbors with a view
and hopes they’ve better things to do.
She strains, she gains the branch, how sweet
to feel its curve beneath her feet.
Yet soon she knows that sweeter still
is the second branch; a thrill
attends each branch in turn. Her knee
is skinned as she goes up the tree,
but Mrs. Paisley doesn’t stop
until she’s reached the tippy top.
Here she grins and looks around.
How pleasant to have left the ground.
