3/21/2011

5

Cold, gray and rainy. I’m wearing my spring coat, but it could be November, except for the pussy willow catkins—those glimmering furs.

5 Comments


  1. Landscape with Sudden Rain, Wet Blooms,
    and a Van Eyck Painting

    Cream and magenta on asphalt, the blooms that ripened
    early on the dogwood now loosened by sudden rain–

    Do you know why the couple touch hands in the Van Eyck
    painting? Their decorum holds the house pillars up,

    plumps the cushions, velvets the drapes for commerce,
    theirs and the world’s. See how the mirror repeats

    and reflects them back to each other, though crowned
    by a rondel of suffering. In her green robe with its

    multitude of gathers, she casts a faint shadow on the bed.
    And the fruit on the window sill might be peach,

    might be pear, might be apple– something with glimmering
    skin, like the lover and the scar he wore like a badge

    to the side of his throat. Fickle nature, cold and grainy
    as the day that spills its seed above the fields, indiscriminate,

    so things grow despite themselves. And there was the one
    who said never, but turned from you to rinse his hands.

    Who else loves his own decorum as I do? The names
    of trees are lovely in latinate. I can’t recite those,

    can only name their changing colors: flush
    and canary, stripped and rose; or moan like the voice

    of a cello in the leaves, imitating human speech.

    ~ Luisa A. Igloria
    03 21 2011


    1. Decorum has never been my strong suit :-)

      (Is latinate a typo for Latin there?)

      Those last three lines. Oh my. Oh my.


        1. Just checking :-) The verse runs smoother with “latinate,” but it surprised me!


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