(I take my students each semester. Look closely, I say, and then write. Do not analyze. Do not label what you write. Just see what happens. I write with them. Most of the time, I find myself writing fiction. Today, I did not.)
I.
Shrouded figures at the well.
Pipes exit the wall,
disappear into the ground.
Only the general’s foot remains
his face long forgotten,
nails pounded into his coffin
a floating prison
one man pondering his gun.
The bent man balances
on his toes in the pit.
Another sorts stone into
red and black bags.
The couple in t-shirts bearing
their own curious faces.
Her skin is a sheet of tin
shimmering in the moonlight
near a dim horizon
where the pink edge of sky
meets a sunken, drooping fence,
a moon-bent telephone pole,
and a row of black-barked trees,
my mother’s molecules dissolve
and the sky barges into night.
Only the bright barn awaits.
II.
His mother looks at currents.
He watches the stars
while the water roils
down near the scrap pile
down near the tugboats
down near the salt
down near the throne
where he guards the ladder
down near the scrap pile
down near the salt pile
two shrouded figures
discuss the water.
III.
Why is he making us look at art?
Why are we looking at art?
Why are we looking?
Why is there art?
All art is temporary.
How long will this ladder/chair
be a ladder/chair?
A hundred years?
Will it reach toward nothing
until infinity unkinks?
How long will its rungs lead
into a silent sky?
Or the book under the glass?
Or the cow in the painting?
Or the unpainted barn wall?
The words are ephemeral,
gone as soon as the poet concludes,
but the paintings and sculptures
radiating an impermanent joy,
what do we make of them?
Clark Knowles 