To Undertake an Etching

“Go into the things you shrink from . . . the questions, the mysteries . . . the seeming contradictions. Go into the dying that is not dying after all. We work so hard at letting go, trying to train ourselves to release our grip on all that is not God. But what if it is not about giving up but giving in? Falling into dirt, as Jesus says here. Going where the grain is supposed to go. Following the spiral with the seed that takes us deeper into the dark but also—finally, fruitfully—out of it . . . ” —Jan Richardson, In the Sanctuary of Women: A Companion for Reflection & Prayer

To Undertake an Etching

—Trusting an unlikely process

Ground

I’m calling it a sign    but it’s not dirt

more like breathing dust    as if to move

a mountain    This is the way trust returns

quietly covering something hard    Like brushing a thin

            waxy coating on cold metal

a script needles old phonemes & syllables

and necessarily shifts to scratching & scraping that

bites through the skin    Bravery

presses the sharp tool    just hard enough

to reveal    silver    A drawing

clears its throat     and but wait    Though lines are drawn

            nothing holds    until the whole thing’s

dropped in acid     The mordant bath

erodes a trough     It takes

only a feather to nudge bubbles from the reaction and

this is how careful play evokes    even encourages

            caustic violence

Pure    crisp    lines     it will take some time

to burn grooves deep enough to reveal

veiled pathways    Then soften oily black ink

with a blade     smear it into the eaten lines

            But please

let the etching plate be tenderly palmed

as if rubbing a smear of jam

off a child’s face     Scrub ink into the lines

Wipe it off    until the apron is stiff

& black    Wiping    wiping    meticulously

cleaning off edges as if there is only one way

to clean    black    white

            and the fog

Out of the greige    comes hope

They mark them artist’s proofs    those initial prints

pulled along the way    Call it a test    a way

to understand what still must change    Incremental

engravings of what has been missed

steps

almost like repentance    each proof

            stamps a warning

a stage    a record pressed into a damp page

and where we thought there would be

a flawless image on pure white

            there it is again

a child’s face    life in progress    complete

with fingerprints

A note to the reader: In Susan Cowger’s poetry, extra spaces between words serve as the pauses that punctuation normally provides. Capital letters denote the beginning of a new sentence.

The featured image, “Colorado Sunset,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Susan Cowger

Poet and visual artist, Susan attends to image: water, sky, faces, flowers, and birds, oh the birds,
even rocks and pebbles, wherever beauty heals and anoints. Beauty ever provides when life feels
bereft. Susan has traveled to marvelous places worldwide and worked in Kenya with Spring of
Hope International. Now Susan and husband Dana live in Spokane WA. Married 47 years, they
have four children and 22 grandchildren (and yes, she finds that number rather shocking too).

susancowger.com