Green and White

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Cool
morning:
everything
damp from an early rain:
the sky like a white dome: a good day
to simmer the string beans:
no time left
to look
back.
.
.
On
the way
to Asheville
we stopped for a picnic.
At wood’s edge, I noticed a flower
I’d never seen before:
Fly Poison –
flowers
spiked.
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Three Blues Diamonds

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The
old rag
and bottle
men down in New Orleans
would play cheap tin horns, making blue notes
that brought the children out
for candy
and small
toys.
.
.
In
my youth,
the showmen
each had a style, a hat,
a handkerchief, a worn overcoat,
and voices that knew time:
character:
the real
stuff.
.
.
The
bent notes

of the blues
come from the depths: they turn
that piercing sliver of cool sweet sound
that makes your soul shiver:
their women
loved that
way.
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A beautiful still life by Rosemary Sexton's friend Zena.

Who could resist such a painting.

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Zena's Truth

I am the plum
inside the apple-plum confection.

I am the word unspoken.

I am the glow beneath
the white rose petal, above its shadow.

I am the sound
between the black and white keys

where the painters live

who paint koi
in the flow of cool water.

Favorite Creatures

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The
manta
rays glide through
the sea with ease: rippling
wings propel them: do they dream walk
on dry ground as I dream
of floating
above
trees?

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I
waited
patiently
for hippopotamus
to gape her mouth: a vast pink chasm:
blunt bone teeth: bulk under
water: those
wiggly
ears.

Pink Hat

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Here's another abstract painting by Sylvia, which is great fun to look at. It has a Japanese quality to it - I imagine if Hokusai were to have made abstract prints they would look like this.
My poem takes off from the image and goes to places I didn't expect.
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Pink Hat

Silly,
ignored as a child, drew fantastical pictures
of creatures in unnatural crayon colors.
Now, she wears bright cotton dresses
in lemon and orange, ruby and sapphire, and
a pink picture hat. Dressed such a way,
she paints to please the child inside.

The hat transports her to other places in other
times – once to the Paris of Breton and Eluard,
where she rode a balloon with a small man
in plaid: he touched her knee: she didn’t mind:
once to Ireland where ghosts appeared
from passage tombs to greet her
with voices like soft summer breezes.
In Africa, a dangerous man in khaki
and rifle put a pink diamond in her hand
and told her to run – which she did.
“Hold on to your hat,” he had shouted.

Then she vanished. No one knew how –
or why. She had traveled to her own childhood
and decided she loved this girl she used to be:
she would become the imaginary friend
she once had imagined and guide the girl’s
growth and when she ripened into bright colors
she would give her the pink hat of her dreams.

Summer Meadow/ Remote Benevolence

This painting by Silvia Williams seems to be in motion -- The sky slanting down toward the flowers; the flowers leaning toward the sky. Wouldn't it be nice to step into this meadow?

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Remote Benevolence

Across the day's page
...................... the sun script slants
.................to the lavender reaches:
the blood of the ground
............................ pulses inside rusty racemes.

Hunger for light -

.......can we grasp its must?
................What does the flower tell

the sun as it swallows?

.............The sun tells no one

what it knows:
The one who is most absent
is most present.

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Out in the World

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Telling
is the world’s
work: you are told to be
what the world wants: even what you want
is what you are told you
want: you can’t
escape.

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A
silence
fell upon
the group as I walked past
with my dogs: I could feel the tension
in the air: those people
with giant
campers
there.