Des spent two weeks with us in the studio producing Circularity at Play. While on-site, she shared her process with students in TOSSafter and participated in our biannual art show, the TOSSing. Her work will be on display at City Hall, Morganton, NC, from February - March, 2022.

A playlist Des created, inspired by songs she listened to while at work in Morganton

Southern Song

By Margaret Walker

I want my body bathed again by southern suns, my soul
reclaimed again from southern land. I want to rest
again in southern fields, in grass and hay and clover
bloom; to lay my hand again upon the clay baked by a
southern sun, to touch the rain-soaked earth and smell
the smell of soil.

I want my rest unbroken in the fields of southern earth;
freedom to watch the corn wave silver in the sun and
mark the splashing of a brook, a pond with ducks and
frogs and count the clouds.

I want no mobs to wrench me from my southern rest; no
forms to take me in the night and burn my shack and
make for me a nightmare full of oil and flame.

I want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to
stand between my body's soutnern song- the fusion of
the South, my body's song and me.

Once more, listening to the wind and rain,
Once more, you and I, and above the hurting sound
Of these comes back the throbbing of remembered rain,
Treasured rain falling on dark ground.
Once more, huddling birds upon the leaves
And summer trembling on a withered vine.
And once more, returning out of pain,
The friendly ghost that was your love and mine.
II
Darkness brings the jungle to our room:
The throb of rain is the throb of muffled drums.
Darkness hangs our room with pendulums
Of vine and in the gathering gloom
Our walls recede into a denseness of
Surrounding trees. This is a night of love
Retained from those lost nights our fathers slept
In huts; this is a night that must not die.
Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept
And tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky.
III
And now the downpour ceases.
Let us go back once more upon the glimmering leaves

And as the throbbing of the drums increases
Shake the grass and dripping boughs of trees.
A dry wind stirs the palm; the old tree grieves.

Still Do I Keep My Look, My Identity...

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Each body has its art, its precious prescribed
Pose, that even in passion's droll contortions, waltzes,
Or push of pain-or when a grief has stabbed
Or hatred hacked- is its and nothing else's.
Each body has its pose. No other stock
That is irrevocable, perpetual,

And its to keep. In castle or in shack.
With rags or robes. Though good, nothing, or ill.
And even in death a body, like no other
On any hill or plain or crawling cot
Or gentle for the lilyless hasty pall
(Having twisted, gagged, and then sweet-ceased to bother),
Shows the old personal art, the look. Shows what
It showed at baseball. What it showed in school.

The moon is but a lantern set by some
Old traunt shepherd to light up a field
Where strange and Brilliant stones sparkle at one
From the blue darkness…. A scattering of sheep
Tread over these bright gems, in scampering
Across the level stretches to the place
Where glows the lantern with a dazzling light.
They rush on past, fleecy and gray and noiseless.
Strange pastoral for poor city dwellers, child.

And see, below… so many more bright stars,
It seems, and golden where these gems are jade
Glint merrily… Could you believe that is
Our City - that - the distant fairyland?
SO many stars - so golden - and so far.
Such little time for such a startling change.
A brief while climbing hills, and what we knew
Too well as turbulence has grown at last
To beauty - quirt, almost faerylike.
Somewhere down there, I know that you are doubtful
And I am too, “in such a night as this
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees”
Somewhere I must insist, we lived all day to day,
And all day for so many yesterdays,
And probably will live so many morrows.
Will it not help when those drab morrows come
With their same burdens you have known so long,
And which, poor tired child, you look on as
Inevitable, unlikely to be shared
Even by me - will it not help to know
That they in such a very little time
Can be relinquished, and almost forgotten?
See how the city streets are lined with light,
And see the figures intricately stenciled
With pricks of gold…Child, is it not a loom
On which some friendly fairy weaves for us
Beauty by night, for daily ugliness?

Those slowly creeping lights, some realists
Would tell us are the headlights of real cars
But we know better…Are you listening?
What has become at last, my frightened child,
Of that brown city that we knew by day?
What of its squalor, of its pettiness -
What of its blatant noises and its dirt-
Its crying children and its fretting grind-
And hectic love close pent in sultry rooms?
What matter those things here, where there is peace,
And cleanliness, where a bright moon looks down,
Untroubledly from a rich blue sky, where winds
That set the lofty cedar tops to creaking
And Whisper in the underbrush, are all
The sounds that break our quietude, my musing,
Such, such a little time, and we can put away
Intolerable things, and we can find at last
Place for communion, place for holy things
Bringing oblivion to trivial cares.
See, Cinderella, all the staring searchlights
That flank the railroads too officiously
Grope in the dark for us. But all their zeal
Will one day mean so little. We’ll return
When we well please then. Almost midnight, child.
I nearly had forgotten the tomorrow…
Oh, but tomorrow… We have learned tonight
That there are havens from all desperate seas,
And every ruthless war rounds into peace.
It seems to me that Love can be that peace.
However stormy or warlike Life has seemed.
What do you think? Why do you never answer?
Asleep so soon… And what a quiet breathing.

Sleep, child…It’s better than these words of mine.
Words that I meant Sincerely to be rich
Of healing for your fever - that have turned
To empty words, apparently so poor.
Sleep on. What else is there for you, - but sleep?