the feeling of time held still

[ the feeling of time held still ]

a work of silence
we move through this lonely evening

the sky
moves rapidly               day to night

as though death         (how presence

shifts) is a serious picture. the unstable
human hand against the frozen certainties
of stone

                      light gleams edges

changing the bell-shaped end of

glass, expecting light           re)fracts
the sound after
wing-to-wing
                         the illusion is of merely
pause
           in activity or weather. dark
                             skies, dead horizon

us into great       spaces       at sunset
what it is to move beyond               the
                    mid-life hour
* * * * *

life's instability and the child's ignorance of it

[ life's instability and the child's ignorance of it ]

Here is a place where landscape matters. The subject is not what the title indicates. As she leans forward I draw a long breath, hold it: a ritual so immemorial it does not matter. The implicit moralities, for instance. Like sacramental overtones of the nurse with her egg, or the supper quail and hare. A pair of doves vanquished by chastity and an artist persuading us to accept the subtlety of different whites. A cloth, a pitcher, a candle, the milky fog of eye perching rather insecurely. Stability made to greatness therefore to lie.

The central story forming over one landscape out of

many. There is pathos, dark days of February, through which the end of winter exposes mystery. Spiritually intense. This scene is more portentous with a young woman looming up out of the umbra. Affected by dreadful certainty that violation is to be done and the balance of metaphor. To withhold breath the world waits and we do not require a legend to know what happens. So reverently it fascinates still.
* * * * *

when sight begins to fail

[ when sight begins to fail ]

every detail is left undramatized. Posing
in a bath full of water
and result is oddly               detached
from softness, pretense
from time, scene
from eye. Her proportions are wrong.
But it is not comforting. Have we not studied figure,
have we not experienced sunlight. Or shadow. Her un-
concern
takes the theme
she holds on her lap.
Equally unconventional a calla
enclosed
(in) swathe white, a
spathe. Venation on which light on
which shade flickeror fade; the bather is unaware,
or pathos would di
-ssolve dark, brooding
    colors into fleeting       ness into
                                                              exuberant beauty.

Objectivity achieved              from contemplation.
Substantial feel              for each figure is preference.
Every detail              left in great
areas of contrasting                blue
brought into the eye as a         lull          against breath.
* * * * *

mood has an earthly vigor

[ mood has an earthly vigor ]

appears almost as if haunted by the idea of an allegory, that the mystery can be taken up with different theories; the figure of Zephyr has held a single blue note against the pallor of the skin, but it is not comforting to find Primavera withheld. For something that we cannot possess, we are too weak, we feel so deeply in tune.

Blue cornflowers moving in slowest rhythm.

Here dreams of Venus on a gilded scallop, here promise and spiritual joy.

Each dark leaf has a gold spine.

How wide spread it was is something disappearing into sea. The Virgin is revealed from death's humiliation. Gravity in two masterpieces lifting the sleeping world immortalized. Two masterpieces with minutely observed grief are utterly different. Each day a great struggle to conflate lighting at the far edges.

The rest is painted on a flat border. The rest is allegory; a small almond tree tells us life has just begun.
* * * * *