Lynn & Leah: A Dialogue in Art & Poetry

John Lund  photo ©2009 JLW Images

        I had the pleasure last month of spending an afternoon in the gallery of Lynn Alicia Franco's home, among her multimedia sculptures.  I wrote about her art, which had captured the heart of my sometimes finicky muse. We decided that I would do a blog of her art and my poems. 
              Lynn Alicia is a Jungian psychoanalyst, and besides her private analytic practice, 
              she teaches, supervises and consults for The Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley, 
              and for candidates and interns at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.                                                                       


                Alchemerical

Bill Fulton Photos

What if you could sculpt whatever you dreamed?                        
What if your voice spoke in clay
the way some speak in numbers  
the way I siphon ink from tears and the sea?                                
What if all that you dreamed
couldn’t be shaped in clay 
couldn’t be fired?
What if it needed grain
needed the density of a growing thing?
What if you could also carve wood  
and join wood to clay 
as earth is joined to tree   
and still keep the fire?
        

John Lund  photo ©2009 JLW Image

                A Good Catch

     Of course you sculpted the pelican
     with a fish in its mouth
     golden fish   treasurefish
     Of course I must write
     about hunger
     about the skimming flight   the dive
     the misses  
     
     His fishline arcs  goes taut  
           tight pull of lifestruggle
                golden fish   treasurefish
                     bringing it home
               

           
                                     
                                           

John Lund  photo ©2009 JLW Images


                   
                



            

                                  
                     Cloth-in-Clay

             You travel among tribes
             where weavers star
             in the play of identity
             and O those intricate designs!
             You sculpt a man with a ceramic belt
             patterned in a hieroglyph of clay bits
             Is this a code? Is there a key
             to your language?

   
  
 Naked  not nude 
 
    What is the difference?
         A man paints  sculpts   gazes
               at nudes
             A woman makes herself
                   naked
                 To make a self
                    And here you are
                      a bare Medusa-headed
                         surf rider on a drift of wood
                            with seashell pink
                                 ceramic wings 
                                    Or are they fins?
                                         Either way
                                               you fly!                             
                                    

John Lund  photo ©2009 JLW Images

                                                                                      
                                                                                             
                                                                                    

John Lund  photo ©2009 JLW Image

A Pair of Ravens
Medievals believed 
the pelican                         
pecked her own breast
to feed her children
Bird as symbol   bird as Christ
Here one raven pecks 
the chest of another 
till the heart is exposed
And we humans know who does that
don't we?

                                                        

John Lund  photo ©2009 JLW Images

                                                 Death & the BuddhaBabe

                                                           The clay hand
                                                       large enough to hold
                                                      a cracked human skull
                                                         has soiled knuckles
                                                             dirt under nails
                                                            as if it dug   hard
                                                              and gloveless
                                                             into the grave
                                                                  Facing
                                                             hand and skull
                                                              a roselipped
                                                                blue-eyed
                                                               BuddhaBabe
                                                             and on his cheek
                                                                a crystal tear

                                                            Oh  I almost forgot
                                                          the BuddhaBabe’s arms
                                                            are raised in surrender                               

Bill Fulton Photos

          Arcadia

Part goat  part man
Lynn’s Pan                 
relaxes on the mantle                                                   
one leg crossed over the other
shaggychested  shaggyhoofed
and yes the lower arms  the hands
are hairy   but what about the….
I get up and
look between his legs
and he’s all man
Pan  pandemonium  panic
I  call it
wildhearted glee