by Lynne Paris-Purtle
Eric Sloane painted
hard blue New Mexico skies
with tatters of dry clouds,
ice blue New England skies
splashed with snow
and wrote,
“I believe that the sky was created for pure beholding.”
Eric Sloane painted red
Yankee barns preserved
with cattle blood
or weathered gray and melding with black soil
where he felt
“a powerful sense of another time.”**
But he loved the art
of everyday life—
tools shaped by calloused hands
cracked deep by cold and rough soil,
saws with handles worn smooth by the grip
of woodsmen,
axes forged by blacksmiths
in blue flames,
the pitchfork shaped from
a forked branch,
a burl bowl
carved and burned from
an injured tree.
Now his paintings hang
skies over earth,
the art he made above tools
he saved from tumbling barns,
because when he held them
he felt “near to another human being
in another life.”***
*Look at the Sky and Tell the Weather by Eric Sloane (Dover, 2004)
**An Age of Barns by Eric Sloane (Voyageur Press, 2001)
***A Museum of Early American Tools by Eric Sloane (Dover, 2002)
About the Author
Lynne Paris-Purtle is a writing professor whose publications also include two poetry chapbooks: Dragonfly Wings and The Hole in the Sky, both published by Last Automat Press. Her upcoming humor book, Seizure Lady, Psycho Man, and the Jersey Boys, will be published later this year. An essay “Hubby’s Gifts Really Take the Cake” appeared in 2013 on Globejotting.com, the humorist Dave Fox’s website. Paris-Purtle holds an M.F.A in Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University and lives in New Fairfield, Connecticut with her husband, Mark, two dogs, and a chicken.