Becoming Lightning, Becoming Bird

R.S. Robison leads a contemplative life in The Village, Oklahoma, painting, gardening and nursing injured wild life. She has successfully released hundreds of birds back to the wild as well as a few opossums, raccoons, rabbits and bats. R. S. received a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Oklahoma and teaches free Zen drawing classes in the community. She and her architect husband, John, own a historic building in the Paseo Art District of Oklahoma City which is divided into artist studios and a main gallery for exhibitions. For many years R.S. has enjoyed exploring a wild marsh area near her home where beaver, foxes, water birds and even osprey frequent. When developers attempted to drain the marshland for human encroachment, she became an environmental activist and succeeded in having it declared a federally protected wetlands. R.S.'s poetry, essays and illustrations have been published several times in PARABOLA: "Rushing Wind" in Prophets and Prophecy, "Five in the Center" in Number and Symbol, "Through Beauty" in Grace. Her narrative poem, "Consolamentum" was set to music by William Ludtke and became the opera/pageant Gaia Sophia which received grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and was performed in Oakland and San Francisco.