Antique School Slate with SLATE Etched In mourning I especially love the huge

I especially love the huge painterly blue sky of this one--just right against the soft

now completely hardened and smooth

in absence of a face

it reveals itself slowly

and the repeating motif of what appear to be smiling little faces (maybe offspring

Antique School Slate with SLATE Etched In mourning I especially love the hugeI love an antique school slate, and even more one that bears the traces of a prior owner, and of course I'm drawn like a magnet to things relating to language, especially when self descriptive. On one side of this one, etched into the slate, is "SLATE" itself, handwritten in capital serif lettering, which sure looks to me as if written in the 19th century based on the manner of the lettering. Perhaps the child who wrote it imagined with great