the blueshift journal

So what is it, this fascination 

with ducks and swans, beaks

 

yanking weed from underwater 

silt, rubbery feet paddling 

 

water that flickers 

with a shallow ripple of wake. 

 

And the lilies, the scissor-cut 

precision of the petals, 

 

cups of blossom floating 

(we almost believe) untethered,

 

nestled among the pads, open 

hands hovering, protective

 

as if the flowers were made of glass. 

The water is a mirror.

 

Within the gallery we pause 

before Sisley’s Loing River at Moret,

 

her black hair a fountain

down her shoulders, her blouse.

 

Back outside in the round pond 

foot-long carp flit

 

orange below a stippled film. 

It is not clear whether I see 

 

these lilies in this moment or whether

I’m viewing them through the lens 

 

the trees and roofs, steeple 

reflected in the swath of river 

 

that sweeps the canvas. 

You’re walking with your friend

 

of forty years, your eyes lifted 

over half-glasses as you move 

 

among the frames, my son sauntering

alongside us with his wife,

 

of having once spent an afternoon 

in L’Orangerie surrounded 

 

by a multitude of brush-stroke 

petals dissolving in the dark. 

 

In the library, we listened to the guide 

tell how the spiral staircase 

 

was designed with no visible support, 

the steel rods embedded within.

 

Yesterday, you and I, so late 

in our years, were married.

 

If we stop and focus, peer below 

the sun-glazed surface, we can 

 

just make out the trailing stems 

that nourished all this flowering.