The Grounded Flame IV

A single moment—arms lifted, spine aligned with the bare birch nearby—captures the elemental presence of early spring. The light is thin but honest. The landscape is not lush, yet it is alive. “There is no exquisite beauty,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe, “without some strangeness in the proportion.” The figure does not stand apart from nature, but within it, like a whisper rising from thawed soil.