Two Ekphrases Anticipating Oblivion

IN ROUSSEAU’S GARDEN

A red sun hangs

Over the black, verdant jungle

Beneath the towering cycads

Among the lotus blossoms, the sansevierias and agave,

Between the columns of flowering cereus,

An ocelot attacks my silhouette

I never expected

That my death would come even before I was born

Dreamt of by a Frenchman

And sold for money

I have memories of its coming,

Of time flowing backwards like an eddy

Rousseau caught it in his strokes:

Feline—Feline of the yellow fang

And me running like twilight

From the thing the artist knows

THE JUGGLER

Dear Lisa,

Thanks for the painting. We hung

It above the bed. Our love

Nest. Each morning, we gaze

Up at it: The caput mortem upside

Down. Bearing down on us, grinning,

As we answer the alarm with curses.

We like the way the amorphous hands, pale

As the seashore sky, juggle the balls—

One as orange as rich yolk or sunset. Is it

The Sun? We want to know. No

Matter, he keeps grinning at us.

Makes our heads swim for coffee

And toast—a slice of melon,

A day as steady as steel nerves.

Dear Lisa. Thanks for reminding us.

Thanks a lot.

Note: About 35 years ago I purchased a poster of Henri Rousseau’s (1844-1910) “Jungle With Setting Sun,” which has followed me all these years. Perhaps my very first ekphrasis is the poem inspired by it. I am attracted to that little shadow figure being attacked and likely consumed by the cat. I interpreted the picture as a statement about death. It was painted the year Rousseau died.

A few years later, a University of Georgia art student, Lisa Thomas, gave me “Juggler.” I love it. And as the poem states it did hang above my marriage bed for a few years. We are still married. And yes, we are still mortal.

"In Rousseau's Garden." Ice Poems. Poetry Atlanta Press. Atlanta, GA. April 1988. (chapbook). Reprinted in Reach of Song 1989-1990. JoAnn Adkins, ed. Georgia State Poetry Society, Inc., Atlanta, GA, 1990. p. 146. Reprinted in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia. Texas Review Press, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX. December, 2012.

"The Juggler." Birmingham Poetry Review, 4 (Spring-Summer 1990), p. 22.