ysabetwordsmith | Poem: "Inner Pictures of the Soul"

This poem came out of the June 7, 2022 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

siliconshaman. It also fills the "Creative" square in my 6-1-22 card for the Cottoncandy Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by

ng_moonmoth. It belongs to the series Eloquent Souls.

"The Inner Pictures of the Soul"

[June 2022]

Shekinah Clay painted souls.

Some looked almost like
ordinary paintings, while
others were almost abstract.

All of them showed soulmarks,
whether those were visible
on the skin or yet to appear.

Sometimes people asked
how she could do that.

"Nature is not only all
that is visible to the eye,"
she said. "It also includes
the inner pictures of the soul."

What she painted was outside
of time and outside of space.
It was simply eternal.

Shekinah painted
in oil and watercolor.

She was so creative
that sometimes she even
made her own paints from
linseed and earth pigments.

"It is all one," she said as
she swirled the colors together.
"One earth, one light, one spirit."

She pressed souls onto canvas,
like making prints with cut fruit.

No matter who they were,
they were all beautiful.

* * *

Notes:

Shekinah Clay -- She has sorrel skin, black eyes, and curly black hair that falls to her hips. Her heritage includes American, African, Hispanic, and Semitic. She is 36 years old in 2022. Shekinah works as an artist. She paints soul portraits, which are sometimes fairly realistic and other times quite abstract. They include soulmarks, whether or not those have yet appeared on the skin. Shekinah does not yet have a soulmark of her own, and has not painted it; she says she doesn't do self-portraits. She wears practical women's clothes, typically shades of gray or brown accented with peach or dusty blue.

* * *

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye.. it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."
– Edvard Munch

Painting the soul or other spiritual experiences is a challenge, but many artists have attempted it. A few even teach it. Shamanic art is a related concept, often blending multiple images or showing different aspects of the same thing.