Charlene Long - Dreams of Possibilities

Continuing to be inspired by the poems of Pauline Johnson, these paintings also reflect my mindset during this time.

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Of great cool drops that fall with sudden splash	Hovered night above	Laughing Skies	O! Lure of the Lost Lagoon

A smell of moss and grasses warm with dew, and far aloft	A dying night, a waking day, and calm but all on me	The Shadows of the shore	Your upchurning waves downcrashing

The sun's red pulses beat	Up on the hills against the sky	Good morning Vancouver!	Summer is lying asleep today

The pine trees whispering	Through branches gaunt and black	That her fingertips are dusting	And calm embrace of silence

Into the crimson portals ajar	In clouds of colouring that run wine-like along the rim of day	A gusty freshening of humid air	August is laughing across the skies

Like a breeze through branches sifting	Another day set free	I hear the call of the singing firs I	I hear the call of the singing firs II

When the firs finger faintly on the strings	The firs, weirdly black bare that stand with great strength	The dawn, grey garbed and velvet shod, is wandering everywhere	The Northern Lights dance down her plains with soft and silvery feet

Yet I am not alone . . .	Solitude	The Morning Trees	From Boulder Unto Boulder

Sing to us cedars; your voice is so lowly	Waiting for the Storm	The plover's passing wing, his lullaby	Sing to us cedars; the night wind is sighing

And here's to the days that are coming	Before the Storm	There are fires on Lulu Island and the smoke uplifting lingers	The cedars chanting vespers to the sea

Sing to us cedars; the twilight is creeping.	The rocks give shelter that the sands deny	The cedar trees have sung their vesper hymn	The Two Sisters

What of the days when we two dreamed together Days marvelously fair.	A sky of blue and grey, Some stormy clouds that play	All the day long the vapours played. At Blindfold in the city streets	Framed in the salt sea winds

Waves that foam and fall and lift	Night of mid-June — in heavy vapours dying	And April dawned with suns aflame	As sinks the sun within that world of wine

The long, long night has been bitter and lone but now 'tis gone	Longing for Daybreak	And a crystal garment o'er her	Dawn lights her candles in the east once more

The silence of the sands when tides are low	And she - between the ocean and the town	My ear can scarcely catch that whispered note