Paintings by Pegatha Hughes
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POETRY about Life and Painting

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Selections from Painting the Sun:
PAINTING THE SUN 
Poems by Pegatha Hughes
Published and distributed by Bookshop Santa Cruz 











Sun/flower
Streams of yellow ochre
down a soaked and heavy page
create a plane of gold no brush has touched.
To make a picture out of it
so it will be something
I add leaves in a horrible shade of green.
It is no longer pristine and wild!

I hold the sun under a faucet,
scrub away green with an old toothbrush.
Behind still brilliant petals,
pale green gold remains.
Blurs of ochre look like seeds and sunspots.
Sun/flower lights up everything for miles around.





Monet's Waterlilies
Having seen this in books, I was not prepared for twenty feet of canvas, soaking wet with water lilies, the French sun upon us and breezes stirring my hair and their light head, blowing across saucer leaves split at one side for frogs to disappear through.  And that much water – lavender and blue, green and mauve. I dipped both hands in and shook droplets upon the floor until the guard came and said, “No bathing in the painting.”


      
Davenport
On a wooded cliff above the sea
we set up easels. Watch out, we laugh.
We size up wave-tossed grandeur.
When fog releases, grey turns blue.
Shadows sliding along a sloping cypress
reveal contours in stripes and spills,
then appear on canvas in blue and umber.
In the shaded grove, trees lean into sun
above stumps of others taken with a saw.
Our path runs near the edge.
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Watercolor Chicken House

When I was an Eastern child
visiting Grandma’s Iowa farm
I’d go inside her strawy-clucky
chicken house for the treasure of eggs.

Before my eyes adjusted to the dark
there’d always be the sudden startle
of a defensive hen. Grandma chuckled.
Expertly she helped me find
warm brown eggs for breakfast.

I sketch the sagging lines,
dry brush grain on mossy boards,
scumble in crumbling shingles,
lay sunlight on the unhinged door,
add faded red on the side 
that got least rain
and a plum tree in memory 
of my grandma’s golden plums.

She was cautious in her affection.
Couldn’t get too close to someone
she might not see in years.
She took my hand in hers,
then stooped and went first into velvety darkness.



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Crazy Fog
The forecast says 90 but there’s a warning chill
so you bike to the cliff in orange fleece,
carrying paints to lure the artist out. 

The sun turns greasy.
Behind ragged sheets of sea-scented fog
color is erased. Chill sends you to the beach 
where the sun shines.

A Picasso-like woman in red bathing suit
stands like a fortress on large dented thighs,
calls, "Come on! You’ll be late!"

But to her granddaughter building a castle
the warning’s as distant as the foghorn up the hill.
You’re glad, because you’re painting them.

Poem and art by Pegatha Hughes
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Watercolor Chicken House










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