(Flight 2199: Regarding Monet)

Far above the dog shit and graffitti of Paris,
I think of you, Monet, from the air up here flying
this sea foam sky, a shelf of waves against a floor
of mist broken open in patches of blue and white.

And I, like some devotee of impending collisions
in texture and transparency, dapple in words
as Giverny expatriates did, their palettes a harvest
of light, cultivating a poetry of space en plein air.

I have looked, Monet, into the mirror into which you
have glanced or long gazed, your Orient prints awash
in blue flirting the glass with the constant movement
of the sea in which little else has changed.

You grew big bellied with age, tousle of hair thick
with gray, sight waning, canvases growing, you padding
the long yawn of rooms lichen blue, narcissus yellow,
a reflection of pads afloat between sky and water.

In your garden, just beyond the rose blanketed fence,
those lilies brown now in this wilted July. I have looked
into the mirror into which you have glanced or long gazed
recollecting those lilies for me, yet another tourist here.

They tell me the best part of your life was inhabiting
these gardens. And as the light fades, I come back to this,
wondering where next it is that I will go, and of my words
what will they become, stretching there en plein air.

This Poem is for My Mother
(The Wedding)

This is a poem for my mother. She gave it to me in ball point
notes tucked into an envelope marked ³the wedding.² This is
a poem about a girl with green eyes in a linen and lace dress,
carrying a parasol, pressing button top shoes into coal town
ground, and red rose petals my mother strew at her feet.

This poem is for my mother, in a tizzy and woozy with this girl
with green eyes on her wedding day marrying a lanky man
who might have been called handsome with a different nose.
This poem is about a storybook beauty, protected from work,
who learned to clean on her wedding day when the groom
put a broom in her hands, made her sweep coins tossed
with twigs and dirt onto the wood planked dance hall floor.

My mother asked me to write this poem. It is for her. It is for
a girl with green eyes carrying a bouquet of homegrown roses,
saved from a calendar page my mother clipped and tacked
to her bedroom wall. My mother says she will never forget her
eyes like she will never forget her own motherıs long brown hair.

Poetry Magazine