Ekphrastic Poems

Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso Bay
James McNeill Whistler

Silence before.

Ghost ships light lamps
to read ghost charts
and leave the pier empty for rats.
They wait to weigh anchor
for the light before dawn
and call quiet numbers across the still.
Fourteen tonnes, four kegs, two surgeons.
Row one over,
oars muffled with rags.
False dawn brightens blue
and the island reminds us it is there.
Someone ashore calls a thin question.
No answers.
Waiting to weight and wage,
all is ready, hammocks furled to block fire,
walls down, guns bound,
smoking rope in buckets.
Sails hang like suspended breath.
The flare!
Gold light reflected on flaring sail,
ghost ships leave silence for war.


Landscape of Twilight
Vincent van Gogh

Homecoming.

Through yellow dusk
and the olive tree
sentries by the road
between the harsh strokes of cat-tails
so rarely traveled there is grass
I walk home
to the empty house
with its blue slate roof
and the woods around it
full of my childhood.


Homecoming (2)

I return home
to find the road I so carefully lined with stones
growing grass.
No feet have left prints since the last rain
and the olives hang unpicked.
No smoke from the blue slate chimneys
or light
from the windows.
I run.