Starry Night

Acrylic paint, graphite, gesso, silver leafing

This image came to me after my mother's recent peaceful passing at age 92. She was surrounded by love and swept up into the night sky as the most natural thing. This poem by Anne Sexton almost covers it.

The Starry Night
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.