493 : Meditation : Variation

I was fortunate to receive some rather helpful feed back from poet Do Gentry as I worked on the covers her poems in the PFA Series -- #492 visiting June on a rainy evening and #493 Meditation. I was intrigued by her reaction to the cover I had designed (pictured above) for Meditation:

"Meditation" gave me more thought ~ and a very good thing that is. I always picture the little engraving from "The Book of Lambspring" ("Be warned and understand truly that two fishes are swimming in our sea.") If you don't know the BofL, I will bring a copy of the engravings for you to look at one day (I hesitate to introduce you to the online alchemical library since it is most addictive!). Your cover is beautiful, but at first, I thought ~ it's not my poem. Then I went home and re-read the poem and realized that it is very much my poem ~ a very fine reflection of my poem. I think of the poem as a "chapter" (if you will) within the larger alchemical manuscript ~ but on its own, of course, it's just a poem with no particular alchemical references. Viewed that way, the moon faces floating in the water is absolutely wonderful ~ and that vestigal fish image on the back! I wouldn't change a thing ~ it's quite wonderful.

Taking Do's comments to heart, I developed the following variation (not replacement) cover for poem #493: