These are some of my block prints from the last few months. All of these are reductive prints, which means that all the colors are inked onto one block–with the block being progressively cut for each color. I hope you enjoy them. Copies of some of them are for sale on my ETSY site: https://www.etsy.com/shop/edasherbriant
But now with darkness ebbing fast
And Autumn lightning leagues away
I nestle in among my caste,
And close my eyes for break of day—
An owlet’s sunshine being the light
From multitudes of distant shale,
Eternal voyagers far above
The Owl-song and the trill and wail
Of creatures deep in forest dress,
Whose night is day and day is night.
With stars as thick as golden dust.
They guide me to my lodgepole pine
Where siblings wait in coats of rust.
Whose tiny sun makes tiny day,
And blinds them to the upturned fields,
Of moons, and stars, and Milky Way.
“Protector of all things that fly
Enfold me in your velvet wings
Receive me in your nest on high.”
He must have left for foreign strands
Perhaps one day I’ll follow him
And see the nights of distant lands.
A fearsome shape with wings like shrouds
Surrounds me from the North-north-west
And blocks the stars like thunderclouds.
My heart, my home, my limb, my life,
I’m banished now from nurture’s shore
As sluggish childhood disappears,
And agile instinct heads to war.
I tumble without conscious thought,
As feathers slice the sky like scythes,
Trees whirl below like tragic hopes
Of dreams fulfilled in un-lived lives.
In ocean air as clear as glass
Then serenade the Milky Way
My voice of wood and candlemass.
I never yet have left this tree;
My nursery of yards and spars,
But childhood ebbs at falcon’s pace
And soon I’ll soar towards the stars.
Ed Asher Briant 