The poem came first.
Before the panels, before the torn paper and watercolor and garden sprayer — there was the story of the cranes, and I needed to find the shape of it in words. What emerged was Unfolding Hope, written in four sections that map directly to the four panels of the quadriptych.
When I began writing the poem into the surface of the work in pastel, the words changed. They became part of the landscape — layered, recolored, some legible up close, some dissolving into marks from a distance. What you read here is the full text, the version that lives underneath the image.
The four sections move through the whole arc: from what was nearly lost, through the people who refused to accept that loss, to what it means to witness recovery, to what recovery asks of us now.
This is my fourth version of Unfolding Hope, the poem. In writing it I discovered I was not looking for my own voice — I was listening for the voice of the natural world. This poem belongs to the estuary, the grasslands.
Unfolding Hope is part of my solo show, made possible through the Houston Endowment Jones Artist Awards Program 2026. Presented in partnership with Weingarten Art Group.
