Photographs by Michael Farrell and poems by Twyla M. Hansen

For about three years beginning in 2019 I made frequent trips to Otoe County, Nebraska looking for photographs using two large format cameras, a 5”x7” and an 8” x 10”. One nice thing about this county is that it has a lot of minimum maintenance dirt roads. I drove all of them, some many times. Later I asked my friend Twyla Hansen, our former state poet who has roots in rural Nebraska, to look at the pictures and respond with a few poems. She responded beyond my dreams with over 30 heartfelt poems. While these photographs and poems were inspired by rural Otoe County they could have been made in many of our nation’s rural areas. The issues and scenes we find here in the heart of the heartland are also found throughout.

Michael Farrell

Old Friends

Parts have bitten the dust, broken, or are missing,
yet the ancient twin cottonwoods remain upright,
flash their twirling leaves in the slightest breeze,
blindly photosynthesizing sunlight on both sides.
They’ve been waving to each other for decades,
their correspondence deep-rooted, pinning smoke,
exchanging stories of the perversion and craziness
in nearby cornfields. Do trees really laugh, or feel?
Perhaps steal, as old friends do, beseech the light,
snitch a bite of food, lean heavy on arms in grief
and guilt. And when their life goal says reproduce,
they cast their fluffy seed-treasures into the wind.

Twyla M. Hansen

A limited edition book with 30 poems and 60 photographs will be available at the gallery for purchase. Unframed prints and poem pairs will also be available for purchase.
Show dates March 2 through April 1, Th -Sat, noon to five or by appointment.