Selfie by Quinn Clarice Mae DeRuiter

The Artist

I walked behind the old city at twilight.

There, a wood called to me.

Entering it wrapped me in a twilight mystery.

Eyes, I felt them just there behind a wall

topped with a strange silver pattern

of stretched and twisted humming hieroglyphs.

Behind and through it, the staring eyes

of an autumn girl.  She was part of the whole

yet a separate meaning.  She stared straight

ahead and through me intent on the last

near purple magic of coming night.

Morning, I hurried to the wood.  Eyes glowing

she smiled but nothing more.

In the city, they said I’d glimpsed the golden

owl that lent his stories to the wood.

But I couldn’t let her go.  At sunset, 

I was there again.  So was the autumn girl

staring at the setting sun.  Following her gaze

I saw a tree with leaves bursting with golden fire.

It whispered perhaps sang.

Back in the city, I found the autumn girl

seated on a wall bathed in the setting sun.

Her glowing pen drew magic.

Lost inside, I walked into her world

and made it mine. 

                      Janice Eskridge © 2019 

About the art and the artist:  Quinn Clarice Mae DeRuiter is an art major at the University of Omaha.  She just returned from a semester of study abroad at the Studio Arts College International in Florence, Italy.  “The Woman on the Wall” post was her art that she did outside of class.  This photo was a selfie assigned by a teacher in Florence.  As Quinn commented on Instagram, ‘The selfie skills it required to take this photo were next level.’  Quinn posts on Instagram as femmefatale_quinn.