How to Judge a Picture
Everyone in the room is cheering. This is what you do for a painting you love! We climb up on one another’s shoulders, wave pom-poms that match the palette. — Rebecca Morgan Frank
Continue reading...read some poetry, make some art, and occasionally write my own
To Paint a Water-Lily
A green level of lily leaves Roofs the pond’s chamber and paves The flies’ furious arena: study These, the two minds of this lady. — Ted Hughes
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Catching Fireflies
Into warm evenings on a shadowy road The children ventured, and once more they knew Remarkable hours, when points of darkness glowed With fresh surprise as myriad fireflies drew Each to imagine stars, but stars at hand … — Thomas Carper
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Catfish
It nuzzles oblivion, confuses itself with mud. A creature of familiar taste … — Claudia Emerson
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In an Artist’s Studio
One face looks out from all his canvases, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans: We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness. — Christina Rossetti
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How to Eat a Poem
Don’t be polite. Bite in. Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that may run down your chin. — Eve Merriam
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Thanksgiving Day
Over the river and through the wood, To have first-rate play. Hear the bells ring, “Ting-a-ling-ding!” Hurrah for Thanksgiving Day! — Lydia Maria Child
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That Bright
Just the passion of painters and poets trying to catch who they think we might be. — Heid E. Erdrich
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Traveler
青山交叠如画 我的目光泼墨而过，完成一轴山水 — 乃生 《行者》 Hills and mountains fold as in a painting My gaze, pouring over like ink, completes a scroll of landscape — by Nai Sheng
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Halloween
The apples are thumping, winter is coming. The lips of the pumpkin soon will be humming. By the caw of the crow on the first of the year, Something will die, something appear. — from Maurice Kilwein Guevara “A Rhyme for Halloween”
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Arrival at Santos
Here is a coast; here is a harbor; here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery; impractically shaped and—who knows?—self-pitying mountains, sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery, with a little church on top of one. And warehouses, some of them painted a…
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Gulf View
Between the striped walls of the canyon Burns a crescent of blue water, arresting, poignant: Jewel-blue, soul of opals and sapphires; Feather-blue, stain of indigo on the peacock’s breast; Flame-blue, color that hovers above the copper-saturated drift- wood in the beach-fire. And the tall white…
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Rabbit in the Moonlight
Moonlight is sharp until I see A rabbit sitting quietly. Then wall and fence and tree and burr Grow soft and touch the night with fur. — by Frank Mitalsky
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Autumn Shade
Awakened by some fear, I watch the sky. Compelled as though by purposes they know, The stars, in the blue distance, still affirm The bond of heaven and earth, the ancient way. This old assurance haunts small creatures, dazed In icy mud, though cold may…
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Country Stars
The nearsighted child has taken off her glasses and come downstairs to be kissed goodnight. She blows on a black windowpane until it’s white. Over the apple trees a great bear passes but she puts her own construction on the night. Two cities, a chemical…
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Rabbit
Droll and erratic, a jackass rabbit jumps From form to field, or wallows in the sand Grotesquely serious, pop-eyed, waggle-eared, Fit for the prairie, born of it, beloved: A Yankee critter, sinewy, strong, and tough, To laugh at, wonder at – but not to catch.
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Reading Myself
Like thousands, I took just pride and more than just, struck matches that brought my blood to a boil; I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire— somehow never wrote something to go back to. Can I suppose I am finished with wax…
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