Sunset on Willamette River Bank

The artwork and text is drawn from a series of poem/painting duets featuring poems written to accompany watercolors painted on David Wolfersberger’s 3500-mile solo bicycle tour of the US West. Certain visual images in this painting caught the poet’s imagination, giving rise to word images in turn. The melting atmosphere of this composition reflects the river, the watery landscape, and the horizon where our days dissolve into our nights. And then there is that pileated woodpecker smiling his knowing smile back at us from his home ground. These images inspired Madronna Holden’s poem, which reflects both the allure and the poignancy of that road of our lives on which we are truly pedaling hello and goodbye at the same time.