Chasing Claude, ©2013, circa 2001. Oil on canvas.
Giverny
In Monet’s garden
across a lake
a Japanese bridge
is draped with white wisteria
like angel’s laughter
waterlilies bloom
in clusters
reflections everywhere
and above
the sky pours down the light
the lilies
floating like the eyes
of fallen stars
with their sad green irises
half drowning
in their own remorse
it is the light of these eyes
he painted
irises peonies and foxgloves
are bordered by straight paths
everything is lush as paint
colours wet the eye
the tongue longs to lick a petal
no I don’t place here
an old man with a beard
under a wide straw hat
leaving the pink green shuttered house
walking between the plants
here instead are tourists
plodding longing
wanting something evanescent
like art that ran behind a door
and left it half ajar
behind it remains the feeling
that if one might look
carefully at an iris or a peony
in a certain secret way
at a certain perfect angle
you could enter too