in the inexplicable contented sky.
I'm looking through a window
only metres souther
than my window used to be.
Same square of sky,
same so happiness.
Shapes tease. My eye jumps
to the step-ladder foreground: couch,
window-frame,
tree-leaves,
into the blue where a gull
hangs like a kite
slipping the wind.
Layers of dawn-pink cloud in
air as deep as chickory
appeal to why?
The restless
conversational waving
leaves, the toss of branches
behind a stolid chimney.
Spirals of wind in a marginal mind
over stunningly straight roof-peak,
angled pattern of brick
meeting pattern of shingle:
distractions from knowing
there's something there
I can't identify, name
nor paint into this picture.
Something the eye does,
allowing time to process:
making the seen, let's say.
The frame inverts, translates back
the picture I think I see:
my life, as many-tiered scene
outside the window, reflects
the heart of the prism.
The next day that sky thing appeared as
an alligator waiting in the water,
or a stone I saw that way.
Why, paintings are
paintings of time.
Czandra
Alligator photo by Michael Boughn
Jamie, no selection of photos could illustrate this poem better than those you chose. I'm endlessly grateful to be read with such closeness, such ability to get inside and find visual expression for the words. Many thanks for your care.
ReplyDeleteConcern for the imagistic concretion of poetic expression seems to be considered old-fashioned by recent post-modernist fashion in poetry. Cat-like, Schroedinger's Cat attempts to walk the boundaries between light and shadow, the visible and the unseen.
ReplyDelete