The Fallen Birds of Youth

Brightly coloured flowers and birds fill the canvas. Each represents a child. Some are almost identical, some hide, some play upside down, each is beautiful and confident of their life. Birds can also be found in the fibre of a pair of abstracted Converse sneakers that are presented as hearts.

Dedicated to Maite Yuleana Rodríguez, age 10, and the countless children whose lives end as a direct result of human to human harm. Maite was one of nineteen students in May 2022 who were lost at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

This work and text was particularly challenging as I wished to ensure the image was not frightening or disturbing for children, yet encourages the viewer to consider the devastation of using weapons that harm them. The repeating motif of birds and fish remind me of how frequently humans fail in their duty of care to their youngest and most vulnerable.

In this allegorical work the hearts, flowers, birds, and sneakers represent hidden meaning with moral and political significance.

At the heart of every snowflake is a nucleus of dust. This tiny particle could originate from any number of places: the smoke from a forest fire; the minute specks of volcano ash that are pushed into the high atmosphere; the fine debris that falls from a meteor as it streaks across the sky; the microscopic particles picked up by the wind from plant spores and the cells of feather and skin that living things shed each day.

I ponder on the journey of a particle of dust. The dust from one living thing to another.

From someone standing on a hill looking skyward, from distant sand, and then for days across an ocean far below, until on high, ice crystals enfold and change the particle of dust to form a single snowflake that lightly tumbles to the earth and, after time, comes to fall upon my palm. I sense its cold but cannot feel its weight. like the image that accompanies the poem, it is as light as light itsesf, waiting to be known by the warmth of my attention. I easily ignore a solitary snowflake, yet its journey can be as great as any I have made.

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A Solitary Snowflake Falls

A speck of dust from soil or sand,

From powder down or loose brushed skin,

Encased within its centre lays,

A prick from past of living thing.

As snowflake falls,

The grain returns in shallow husk of crystal white,

Come gently lay upon this earth,

In wait and warmth in day or night.

ORIGINATOR · Mike de Sousa

ART FORM · Alegorical Figurative Art

COMPLETED · 2022

Free to enjoy. Copyright maintained. Not to be used for ai or commercial gain.

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