The University of Texas at Austin

Law in Popular Culture collection

The Legal Studies Forum
Volume 30, Number 1/2 (2006)
reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum

Lawyers & Poets
Walk This Lonesome

SARA JANE BOYERS
________________________

Black Rothko
- Rothko No. 1, 1964
Kunstmuseum, Basel
I saw a Rothko today. Black
Squares suspended in vertical stasis.

One mordant form. An inapposite other.

Oppressive. Pulsating. Inviolate.

It made me cry

      - for  Lillian,  my   aunt.   Her   centenarian   years:   a   life
presence always.

      - for Jackson, my dog. His time: my children's youth.

      - for the loss of family not formed, though the years should
have made it so.

      - for my own life suspended, undone by death well done.

Perhaps Rothko too cried although, had he cried,
He might not have ended it as he did.

[453]


Sara Jane Boyers is a former music industry attorney/executive and personal manager of performers, who changed directions to become a writer and photographer. She is a graduate of the University of California (Berkeley & Los Angeles) and obtained her J.D. from the University of Southern California Law School.
Boyers is the creator of a series of illustrated books on contemporary art and poetry including, Life Doesn't Frighten Me (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1993) and is the author of Teen Power Politics: Make Yourself Heard (Millbrook Press, 2000), a book for youth on civics and political activism.
A Southern Californian, Boyers is a contributor to print journals and websites, a lecturer on issues of civic and political involvement, and the creator/owner of an e-newsletter and website that focuses on political issues and current events of interest to youth. Her photography was recently exhibited as part of a project on North American Chinatowns for which she has developed an illustrated book.