Bare Suggestion

 

the moment she bent
one fluid motion
for the thin bough
both hands grasping

bare suggestion
could he have meant it
for the bending trees

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artist: Vincent van Gogh

I write a poem before I search for illustration.  The black chalk drawing by Vincent van Gogh, “Woman Picking up a Stick in Front of Trees, 1890,” is an exception.

like a tiny stroke

most spellbinding…most absorbing
is her gaze from beneath God’s arm
toward Adam’s last oblivion

her…my…instant dawning
empathy pierces through me
like a tiny stroke

I know…
cloud gazers see a diorama…
some halved sugar crystal Easter
egg of iconic chaos

perception varies…the magenta cloak
is brain semi-skull …is female uterus
is reminiscent Botticelli

yet…
what enthralls me absolute…
her prescience… exquisite as a
master cellist’s single bowing

this quintessential
this timeless
this Michelangelo

 

Bonnie Marshall

Fresco by Michelangelo Buonarroti
Sistine Chapel

 

 

thoughts for the color blind

 

love is shade movable as shadow;
it is scintillant brightness;
it cannot be defined as if it were
a color described to someone blind
as orange…azure…emerald… a
dainty pink…a blood deep red

its thinking etches or erases like
lace edged sea foam on a beach

it is invisible as gravity…sensed
like space between tick…tock

no spell is implicit in its sounding
for its spelling is not sacrosanct…
it may as well be evol…olev…velo

enough…for we think of it as warm
or chill or thrill or pain or ecstasy…as
literal as pinch…sustaining as if breath

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Thomas Pollock Anshutz

 

 

 

going for distract

 

oh, Dear Reader…let’s go for distract…
pretend it’s a rainy day…or blazing hot
or something’s wrong with our setting
and we can’t change the world…at least
not these very moments

now consider the reward  of thinking
boustrophedon…come on…stay with
me on this one, for it’s a marvel, and
will prove advantage in a curious life
once you get the knack of it…like
computer glasses…or tapping apps

 

 

there…you  just “boused”…might
tease your eyes a bit at first until you
find the motion knack of it…the plow
of it, like oxen forward backward on
a field, the way some Greeks…some
Romans incised glyphs into their clay

use it now…you’re ready… you…
could try it with van Gogh…his great
“Rain – Auvers”…1890…one from
his final works

start top left…scan seeing thinking
left to right and right to left across
its levels blue to gold to blue…stop
now and then to ponder what he shows
for it will wonder you

and then…there is…his rain

 

Bonnie Marshall

Painting by Vincent van Gogh
“Rain – Auvers” (1890)

I Thought This Thought in Italy

Michelangelo struck marble compulsively
the way nectar bees in his wild garden
probed flower hearts…to dart and drive,
to draw life force from corporeality
be it clover or Carrara, they sweet sweat
penetrated to quartz dust pollen revelry.

I thought this thought in Italy…one day
as I hovered ‘round and ‘round and ‘round
his unfinished statue…a mighty Captive
imprisoned in unyielding custody of stone
both hands and feet gaoled in the column
where his body twisted toward free will.

And from that day in Italy…surrounded by
his finished polished blessed Sistine and his
decisive David…this is a work of art I savor
that I captured then.. a rich raw gold
honey life force in my comb of memory.

Bonnie Marshall