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| Mother and daughter, Gloria Lynn |
Rope
The tug-of-war,
the pulling of knotted rope,
the stretching ends,
the fraying ends,
fingers red and burning
from holding on,
from waiting to see
who is first to cave.
Who will lose their grip?
Mother or daughter?
It is not a matter
of winning or losing.
It is the Mother who must let go,
reject the temptation to throw a lasso.
The falling daughter
will rise into her own.
She will carry her mother’s cautions
in memory like a suitcase
filled with clothes,
and take them out to wear,
one by one,
to see how well they fit.
Beneath them all—
her own long cord,
the secret binding,
the thickened string,
the rope she, too, will pull
when the tug-of-war comes.
© Althea Romeo-Mark, 2015
According to an interview, “ANOTHER ISLAND, ANOTHER
LIFE” published in The New York Times by Esther Fein in May 13, 1984, the Lynns' home was on Long Island for more than 20
years. Mr. Lynn was an advertising executive who made the one-and-a-half-hour
commute to Madison Avenue five days a week, to sit behind a drafting table.
Mrs. Lynn worked at home as an interior designer, deciding between cafe
curtains or pullbacks for her suburban friends' kitchens.
Now their
home and their work are on this lush Caribbean island, where Mrs. Lynn paints
scenes of native islanders and Mr. Lynn is a sculptor. One of their sons, Rob,
30, also lives and paints year-round on the island, in the neighboring village
of Orleans. Another son, Peter, 33, divides his time between St. Martin, where
he paints, and New York, where he works as a commercial artist. The third son,
Bill, 35, works as a commercial artist in Montpelier, Vt.
''When we
moved here, most of our friends thought we were nuts,'' said Mr. Lynn, who met
his wife when they were students at the Pratt Institute of Art. ''And to be
honest, being in advertising most of my life, it never dawned on me that I
could make my living in the fine arts.''
The Lynns
first came to St. Martin - as did some of their friends - on a package tour
that included hotel, transfers and a free welcome cocktail. Their friends tried
new islands each winter, but the Lynns kept returning to St. Martin.
Mrs. Lynn
sometimes made short trips on her own, staying in a friend's guest house. She
would spend her days at the beach and the market, watching the local women at
work and in the market.
''I fell in
the love with the people here,'' said Mrs. Lynn, whose paintings, washed in
bright colors, have a Gauguin-like quality. ''It was as if this little seed had
been planted in my head telling us that maybe we could live here, and every
time I'd come down the seed would grow and grow. But I would just say to
myself, 'Gloria, don't be ridiculous. You have a house and a dishwasher. You
just don't do things like that.'
Read the full article:http://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/13/nyregion/another-island-another-life.html
I really do love her work. Other examples of her work can be seen here:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/326440672970117448/I hope you love my poem "Rope" and her work, too.
"Rope" was published in DoveTales: Family and Cultural Identity: An International Journal of the Arts, published by Writing for Peace, McNaughton & Gunn,2016
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