In the gallery,
in angles painted in light
your frame stood lovely in its corner:
engrossed, solitary.
From mine,
I gazed upon the canvas
where Hopper painted the Truro hills
rolling across their spaces.
The etchings in a sign:
The Hoppers summered in a
small house among the empty
dunes of South Truro.
How nice, I thought,
to be an artist
or just to use summer as a verb.
In Truro mosquitoes summer
in pools of rain-water &
cicadas chime in wooded hills.
On the canvas nestled between hills &
sunlight, Hopper shows a cottage
real enough to have been the one
where we made love
beneath white bed linens & the hush
of the salty Atlantic.
Truro, on its canvas,
has not changed.
These images & spaces,
though not eternal
persist.
From summer to summer
our images will press against
sterile angles of light
in this time, this space.
So, the sea will have her way.
Even in eighteen-fifty
Thoreau saw her, hungry,
eating the Cliffs of Highland in
Truro—forty feet a year.
Still we sit, in our corners,
watching her.
Comments
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Nice Paining of Truro!
Hey, dearchicago; I was just going about, randomly reading poems, and I came across this poem.
I've never heard of Truro, but this poem paints a very great image of the place. It gives a very relaxing, happy feeling, and I like how I felt reading it.
I looked at the painting, and the feel you gave in the poem very well reflects the feel. Nice job!language: 4, rhythm: 5, subject: 5, tone: 5, form: 5.
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This piece has the feel of Hopper
spare and New England and clear, like Shaker furniture. Very pleasing... and I can recall Truro through it too. Welcome to SP, look forward to reading more = best RA -
This one, Kevin, is a painting in itself as it conjures up Hopper's canvas of Truro. I like it, mainly because its images make me see not only the canvas but the real Truro with its memories for the poet and his companion.
The poem takes its time, allows itself to develop slowly, the same way it must have been painted in the first place. Favorite lines, among many: "These images & spaces, / though not eternal / persist." For me, those lines are the core of this poem. Nicely disciplined and heartful piece for me to enjoy!
Lad -
i thought it was nice, little long but sometimes you just need to take different routes of expressing ourselves...very nice job though
language: 5, rhythm: 2, subject: 3, tone: 4, form: 3.
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