Can You Imagine Us?
Old Friends, Sharing a Park Bench (Not Entirely) Quietly
from miss bradley’s homeroom to
laurelhurst park paths—
laughing all the way
—dotty seiter
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~3 x 3″; watercolor in travel art journal
card #25 in a series of color swatches
2025
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Notes on poem and art:
• With “Old Friends” I elected to compose a haiku in lines of 7, 5, and 5 syllables instead of the more traditional 5, 7, 5 pattern. This poem celebrates a visit with Martha in September and our friendship of 58 years which started at the American School in London where we’d each landed for our senior year of high school.
• A Still Point highlights the juxtaposition of vibrancy and fading beauty in late season hydrangea. I had to laugh at my not being able to forego painting new color swatches for my ongoing series, even on vacation! But how could I not catalog something from Martha’s garden, especially when it seemed to give a nod to our own juxtaposition of “vibrancy and fading beauty of late season”—we met as high school seniors, and now we’re life seniors!
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11 responses to “Can You Imagine Us?”
Yay for life senior friends! Huge gift, that. And laughter just CANNOT be beat.
Thanks for picking up on the mirroring of fading flowers and friendship. That was not a thought that I carried into my notes but rather one that presented itself AS I wrote. I know you are well familiar with that kind of gem yourself : )
I can hear your laughter ! Poem sings!
What a beautiful color swatch! With even a travel set you managed so many variations of color.
So wonderful old highschool friendships! I have a monthly zoom meeting with three of best friends from highschool. Two continents, 4 time zones. May have mentioned it before, senior moment.
Carol, love that you can hear the laughter. It is such a gift to have vivid memories of homeroom in a new high school thousands of miles from home at the beginning of senior year, and to still be close friends with someone I met for the first time then.
And you, too, have lively extant friendships from high school, now fostered across continents and time zones via zoom : )
Thanks for your delight in this color swatch. For my travel watercolors I used a set from Grabie with 100 tiny pans. It didn’t take up much space but did allow for a good range of color mixing.
Sheila, thank you for your smiling affirmation of the beauty, the special, the sweet, the blessed, the joy
