the woman in the garden

 

she sits inhaling the summer day

her lemon dress dappled in light

the children's laughter are light as clouds

while another woman's voice is playful sing-song

this scene looks like a perfect vacation scene

but it is not 

her hands are knotted in prayer

a mother's prayer

her head filled with the pain & turmoil of her son's life

his pain is her pain

she prays for the stillness of doves

and fullness of lion's courage to do what is

right and just

she sinks into the white and green space

this garden is a healing salve

peering over the vase of aster blooms

she feels a deep peace settling

on her lap

soft as a yellow butterfly

Le Pho (1907-2001), Women and Children in the Garden (c. 1970), oil on canvas

Posted for dVerse Poets Pub - Le Pho, hosted by Melissa Lemay.  Thank you for the visits and comments.

Clothes

The wind beneath us

Misses our sweat, stains & messes

Rinsed in clean water

Scrubbed in soap & bleach

We jiggle & jam to be free 

Instead you pin our shoulders on

Lines with brown clips

Hooked our faces to marvel

The heat from this cloudless day   

Our bows are scattered across

Blues, pinks, blacks & whites

The sky watches the chorus

of birdsongs & buzzing bees

The green in the grass is new

You peer from the window

ready with your basket & starched hands

to fold us over your skin

Cotton-  softly sagging, frayed edges

Linen-  loosely wrinkled, stretched out

Smelling unabashedly - wind-kneaded, sun-baked -

Franz Marc, Flatternde Wäsche im Wind (1906)

Posted for dVerse Poets Pub - Poetics, March Wind Ekprastic, Hosted by Merril D. Smith.  Thanks for your visits and comments.

Self-Portrait

                                                                        Artist in his Studio by Rembrandt


In the light, your face is half moon
Etched on canvas, unfurling
Shadows of restless sea, I see

Jagged lines, brittle as sand dunes
Browning hues, lush as autumn's swirling  
In the light, your face is half moon

Silver-lidded, a mirage of June's perfect skies 
But August's unflinchingly death stares
Bestow shadows of restless sea, I see

Your singular passion, your wounds
Glint of secret core, raw as unrefined salt
No light nor half moon can dim, a face

Inked in velvet-red strokes, a darkening to swoon
A master boldly unrepentant as eagle swooping its prey
There are shadows,  restless as sea, I see  

Deep despair from love's lost
Grieving hands from burying a child
In the light, your face is half moon

Celebrated by many, your signature is known
But you breathe on cliff's edge, a yearning 
to live amidst shadows, restless as the sea, I 

Look for your bones under church's tombstone
Marked for men, broken and poor     
In the dying light, your face pivots a full moon
throwing shadows to restless sea, I see.....         me


Posted for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads - Ekphrasis - Hosted by Bjorn Rudberg
and Poets United - This started as a villanelle but I added more lines & didn't follow the rhyming scheme.    Thanks for your visits ~

One sunny afternoon

The White Boat by Joaquin Sorolla (1905)

white boat 
tugs the children:   
let us sail to the sea-- 
treasures await us.  the sky calls-  
bluest

of clouds,
cradling waters
warmed by shells, weeds & crabs-  
buoying the children on its womb,
they're off--



Posted for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads - Sunday Challenge:  Joaquin Sorolla
and Poets United
Poetry form:  cinqauin (2-4-6-8-2 syllabic count) 

The birds in space

Title and Artist:  M. C. Escher

the birds inked the sky with their plumes  

as if they knew a secret that i don't know of

cut from the same hewn, like school of fish, 

they cocked their heads in perfect angle    

hovering in mid-city sky, taupe and white

wingtips pointing to the same direction & fate  --  

i listen closely, my nostrils prickling at

their steadfast sentiments, the shape of squares   

reminding me of my mother's shawl  

now folded neatly in a drawer with her rosary -- 

shaking their feathers in a final wave,   

i see one thousand birds soaring in unison,

to a place I have yet to go --
leaving me, rooted with questions,

& pondering my next step

Posted for OpenLinkNight of Imaginary Garden with Real Toads - every Monday

and Sunday's Challenge:  Ekphrasis 

and D'verse Poets Pub - every Tuesday

Ekphrasis is the graphic, often dramatic, description of a visual work of art. The word comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and as a verb it means to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name.