Tapola drives a wedge,
a thin point
from fantasy to intimacy, 
touched in opaque marks.

You wonder how this ball of gum
is chewed and comes out blue.
Thick tablets strike the floor 

a shield with moss 
and cherries
overall a vibrant glove.

These are not windows but what comes flying at you
from a new dimension
an asteroid, calcified, and then struck

Nothing will fall out
One does not pass through this fly’s eye
only dreams magnified, cracked and shaken.

Seen through a ray
of rigid muslin
two tears are withheld from the eye

a welcome splash
to soak the surface of the prism

forgiving time
and other wishes
for sleep and movement.

This narrow view, 
pinholed 
and covered over.
this transparency,
it resists my felt touch

the paper smudged and brushed
is closed to contribution
graphite messages written
to echo form

these
foreign mirrors facing me
are a match for one. 

Ancient tv sets
tuned to ludicrous chatter
we cannot hear their voices
but we are watching their hands move.

An image, embedded in clay, inseparable. To see the painting without it’s coat would be an abandonment. The clay: it’s body, the vehicle. How it got to this world, to rest on this wall. Each alive and generating its own history as one speaks. 

Handled so lovingly, palm prints, gouache painted on and washed off. One feels Tapola’s joy in creating a form, the outline against the wall, a punctuation, what can be pressed into it, the surface tender, receptive. Tokens in breast pockets, clutched in one's palms until shattered.

Each exploratory, memory traveling into myth. A passage. This collection, a deck of cards, collapsing and multiplying into one another. One doesn’t know this world, but feels sure if touched they would find themselves somewhere new.