After Monet and Emily Pittinos
With a line from A Cloud of Drench Bearing Down
Here I am as mud in wetlands. I’m standing
beside myself with you and the clouds,
enveloped. Rain is weird like that. You’d almost
think it loves you back. Hold me in your
ribs, darling. Let me in. You are king
tide. Knee deep water at midnight, the painting
and painting of water lilies. Paint me into your portrait,
and hold me tightly in the downpour. Don’t leave me
here. The water is becoming murkier minute
by minute. Hold me in your hand and watch
me wither like the dying honeysuckles
you planted last winter. Strip me down to my
roots and marvel at the both of us sitting there,
helpless. My skeleton left in our flood. Here I am
as a statue. Liquified, indignant. The turning
of tables, of poems, of us in the moonlight. A torpor
for the two of us. Dusk, then dark, and you
on a pedestal. Watch as it crumbles at your touch,
and this, a painting hung over our pond. You as
Monet, me as his landscape. As water levels rising.
Book after book read past midnight. This too, how could you?
