Klimt in His Garden
on Jasper Krabbé's painting of the painter Gustav Klimt
He moves in a moonlength robe
through an evening green garden
of quietude; with hidden feet
that touch the muted grass and moss;
his figure almost afloat
under the first blooms
faint and soon fragrant
on the branches over his silent head
and soft beard, without thought
of brushes or canvases,
only this moment
savoring the poetry
of a Spring night
in his garden.
New York City
March 2007
A Sun-Baubled Sea
on John Marin’s watercolor painting "Sunspots," Cape Split Maine 1920
Off the coarse point
of another time
an unfaded ocean
verges out in caps and crests
of cobalt, indigo, turquoise,
past one small, bleach-sailed boat,
toward a streaking sky
where the sun becomes baubles
of chrome yellow, rose madder,
viridian and cerulean,
that float above the water-color
surface, that float inside
my water-colored eyes.
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York City
December 2011
Winslow H.
Winslow would have captured it all:
the last sun soaking
the bristled chests and tufted brows
of evergreen, the pure white wash
of light on the starboard side
of the anchored lobster boats;
the mauve and violet shadows
on the shingled surface:
all the watercolors
of this ultramarine world
refracted in the strokes
of his sable brush.
Sullivan Harbor
Maine
September 1998
from The Speed of Sight
Saturated
"How do you see these trees? They are yellow. So,
put in yellow; this shadow, rather blue, paint it with
pure ultramarine; these red leaves? Put in vermilion."
~ Paul Gauguin to Paul Sérusier
Fauvist.
The colors.
The Collioureness.
The saturated
abstractions,
expressions.
Of the walls.
The water.
The stalks,
fronds, flowers.
The high noon,
late-day shadows.
Everywhere,
shades of Matisse,
brushes of Derain,
Gauguin, Vlaminck.
Rushes of sun.
Wildly fresh
images, wet and
drying canvases.
on Tucker's Point
Bermuda
July 2017