Dreams of Death/Life

Must my aging/sorrow erupt

from every body orifice?

       every half-healed hurt?

       every chink in my soul?

daughter of the deep south

well schooled in the authoritative religious patriarchal 

structures of the south

then born again, but in my own image

yet obsessed with decomposition

       the marks of nature on my flesh and on my soul

why does death always manifest itself in my images?

                                             in my dreams?

                                             in my body?

fragments of fears

like puss pockets push out slivers of dis-ease long imbedded

everything is in process – dreaming, dying, deconstructing

so I make photographs that mark the miracle of re-formation

              nature’s embrace of death

And it all made sense until April 14, 1999 when a stranger on the 

phone told me my son had been killed in an automobile accident……..