A Limited Palette
I want to say up front that I love my life. That is, I feel tremendously grateful for the work I’ve been given to do, for the people surrounding me, for the family and friends who are regularly such a blessing. I give thanks for all of this everyday.
And yet… And yet there are moments where I grow intensely curious about what a different life would look like and find myself slipping into day dreams about spending my time doing mosaics through the winter and traveling to craft shows to sell them all summer. Or giving everything up to become a documentary film-maker. Or hiking across Europe and cataloguing it via photos. Or playing fiddle in a bluegrass group or…
Well, you get the idea. And I so I resonated so deeply with the first line of Ted Kooser’s poem “A Person of Limited Palette.” But as I was drawn into the poem, I also appreciated that even in the daydream there are limitations. A compelling dream doesn’t have to be heroic. Being a painter with a limited palette might be enough…and might be attainable. Similarly, a dream doesn’t necessarily need to be realized to enrich one’s life. Sometimes – not always, but sometimes – the dream, the vision, the chance to lose yourself in another possibility is enough. So that the dream of a cottage by the sea to the person in Nebraska was still a beautiful vision, one worth dreaming.
A Person of Limited Palette
I would love to have lived out my years
in a cottage a few blocks from the sea,
and to have spent my mornings painting
out in the cold, wet rocks, to be known
as “a local artist,” a pleasant old man
who “paints passably well, in a traditional
manner,” though a person of limited
talent, of limited palette: earth tones
and predictable blues, snap-brim cloth cap
and cardigan, baggy old trousers
and comfortable shoes, but none of this
shall come to pass, for every day
the possibilities grow fewer, like swallows
in autumn. If you should come looking
for me, you’ll find me here, in Nebraska,
thirty miles south of the broad Platte River,
right under the flyway of dreams.
“A Person of Limited Palette” by Ted Kooser from Splitting an Order
Your post was so thoughtful and beautiful…just what I needed to hear as my eyes mist up…I am a person of limited palette..and seek to affirm others in that…for this too has a beauty and…is it not so special to have a seat on the carousel of life even if your horse only remains still/static, when the majestic steeds of others move up and down, and your closest friends grasp the golden ring which isn’t within your reach? I think that there is beauty in just being present to this…and curious about the one who makes the carousel run in the first place. I loved your posting of the poem…one for the journal. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing a simple poetic dream. The palette may be limited but the sky is the limit when it comes to dreaming. Words are limitless as well to create a moving post. Blessings to you.
Hey David,
You might want to check out the NY Times 3/14/15 article “The Church of Ted” by Megan Husted “The popular talks are today’s Evangelical Tent revivals.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/the-church-of-ted.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150314&nlid=36195672&tntemail0=y
Roger Dieterle, Medora, ND
Thanks so much for posting this poem – it struck a chord with me – not so much a limited palette but not the colours I had anticipated using to draw out and colour in my life……but then there is a master artist who knows so much better than I do what shades and tones are required to complete in me the work of art that my life was intended to be.