Between The Worlds: Lingering Spirit

Now and then I participate in swaps with a group of mixed media artists who specialize in making art decks. Some of the past themes we've worked with have included things like "Characters in Literature", "Mythical Metamorphosis", "Secrets", and "Famous Quotes." The theme of the current swap is "Between the Worlds" and is supposed to be about anything that is a bit outside the everyday world of the five senses. After considering and discarding several ideas, I decided to do a card based on the poem "Patsy Sees a Ghost" by Lola Haskins. The poem is about one of many reasons ghosts are said to linger - to give warnings to the living. In it, Patsy is walking through the woods one day, about to cross a swollen river when she suddenly sees a woman dressed all in white. She then realizes she can see the blackberries and trumpet vines through the woman's dress. The spirit speaks to Patsy, calling her by name, and tells her if she doesn't take great care in crossing the river she'll fall in and be caught in the current and drown and be trapped there, "and you'll be gone, gone as the moment you looked up and saw the trumpet vine and berries, hot and ready through my white dress, gone as all the years since I died, and waited here for you." The card I did is supposed to represent the moment Patsy comes upon the spirit standing by the river and realizes she can see through her and that her world just slid a little sideways from everything she knew before. "Between the Worlds: Lingering Spirit"