@3Hurry! Hurry!@1 Flames pour from the cottage window. The plane goes down to sea, and like a pelican scoops up a beakful of water, returns to the burning vision of a crucifixion which smells of the artist's linseed oil and the trapped mistress, his muse, who lives in his throat, content never to come out. I watch the pilot pour water into the artist's mouth and eyes, and through his red roof. Yellow fire eats the edges of his yard. The priest has come and is waving a giant candle at the anger of the artist in his spilled moonlight. Here too, an old peasant woman with nothing to hide and her junk cart, has brought sacks full of dead birds and rotten apples in the name of his color zone, as he requested but no longer needs. As I leave him, the artist is beating his way across the hillside with fire and smoke swimming from the rear of his musty brown suit. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE CHILD by HAYDEN CARRUTH ECSTASY by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON A MID-DAY DREAMER by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON CLAY BISON IN A CAVE by CLARENCE MAJOR SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MRS. SIBLEY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: PAULINE BARRETT by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |