They Themselves Were Fully at Rest 15X38 Pastel on paper
This work reflects a satellite image of a summer algea bloom in Milford Lake resevoir, Kansas. The text contains many references to Walt Whitman's poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, including the title of the artwork, found in Section 15 of Whitman's verse. Read the poem in full on the Poetry Foundation's website.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d