Associative Thoughts on an Image of the Forest at Sandarmokh

Artwork by Robin Young

Of course I first notice the sun and how it lends
the trees in the distance the color of cinnamon.
The straight, tall trees, gathered like those sticks
others had with tea—tea she always tried to get
me to try. We’d sit in her parents’ kitchen and
she’d tap the stick against the rim and lecture on
the benefits of that particular beverage—green
her favorite, green the best. No visible green here,
and the one trunk is broken, a stump someone
could sit on and contemplate death and what it
means to be put into the ground with no marker.
We could step between and step upon and have
to ask forgiveness, unlike that one stretch of
highway where all the pines had been planted
in rows and we talked of the bus stopping to let us
meander among. Our grandparents dying then
was our excuse for missing history class and his
watery slides and detailed maps. I was good at
those—at the coloring in of countries with a gentle
pencil of a nondescript shade. And, here, the capital
in ink. Places I had never gone to, will never go
to—this one of them. There are perfect circles
around each tree, bowls of snow, and the light
working at casting shadows that seem delicate.
And there’s a kind of glow to it all, as if it isn’t
what we now know it is.

About the Author

Kelly R. Samuels is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books, 2021) and two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, RHINO and The Pinch. She lives in the Upper Midwest.

About the ARTIST

Based in Borrego Springs California, artist Robin Young works in mixed media focusing on collage and contemporary art making. Her focus on collage art using magazine clippings, photos, masking tape, wallpaper, jewelry, feathers, foil etc. allows her to develop deep into the whimsical and intuitive. Repurposing nostalgic images for lighthearted and sometimes disquieting messages; Robin’s artistic universe is strange, funky, sometimes perverse and always alluring. Robin lives in the California desert with her creative husband John and lazy dog Comet.