St. Petersburg, Russia
(c) June 2012 Emma E. Glennon

Lately, as I have pondered assorted metal hues, my far-away daughter has been taking photographs steeped in gold.

Just as Fields of Gold has a lovely version sung in a female voice; Yeats’ Song of Wandering Aengus (which is in fact a poem) has been given a female voice.

When I was a high school senior, I enlisted the help of many friends in painting a mural–which somehow has not faded–high up in the school’s entryway.  It has bright rainbow colors and is segmented (in a very then-mod way) with scenes from nature and snippets of favorite quotes.

I notice now that, in keeping with my personality–and nicely dovetailing with the prior decade’s outsized colors and cartoon shapes–my painting style was one of clear, bright-line distinctions among colors, not the light and shading and nuance of my daughters’ paintings and photographs.

Oil Painting (c) 2011 Emma E. Glennon

One of the mural’s quotes is from Yeats and accompanies a bright painted sun, referencing “The silver apples of the moon,/The golden apples of the sun.”

Went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire aflame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

May Moon, 2012