All My Pretty Loves

Haikus on letting go, and letting art take its own shape

I release you, now
all my pretty loves
to the wild wind

untether, unfurl
the way I cannot, myself
fly from my hands

whirl and twirl
your destiny now your own
freely meander

once only my own
I will only dare dream, now
what dreams you inspire

but dreamed or undreamed
by yourselves or the world
I will now not choose

for I but borrowed
your shape, sound, spirit
from you, yourselves

flutter and follow
the lost leaves and feathers
to the calling dawn

wander away, now
my hands make you tarnished
in ownership unearned

dance, dance away, now
I am fast shadow and dust
so dash, dash away

flourish in the sun
for wherever the sun takes you
is where you belong

I believe that, in many ways, our art is not our own - that it belongs to itself. Regardless of our desire or intent, it wanders away and becomes itself, understood by others as only they understand it. All we can do is craft it well at inception, and release it when it is ready.

So, too, is it with our children. We love, we nourish, we protect them - but we are only ever just their stewards, charged with facilitating their birth, their growth, and, finally, their departure in flight. They are ours, but we do not own them beyond the first holding of hands.

I recently did this with something I made - left it where others could enjoy. Beyond that, it will go wherever they take it, and finally arrive where it goes. It was never mine to decide, even if I felt a part of myself go with it. And these were the words that came to me of it.

— Johnny, Under Sky

Written to the lament that ends Howard Shore’s Bridge of Khazad-dûm (Gandalf’s fall).