January-February 2026
The Encounter
By Władysław Podkowińsk
The ilk of ink met one eve
On a rocky road, on a shady sleeve
I’ve brought my friends
Did you bring yours?
Leave them right there
Lean them up against the wall
Then we’ll talk
How could we go about it?
How could we get around it?
Some nights last years,
Others an hour
But for ships like us
It’s never the right count
The ilk of ink left one eve
With a grand meadow in between
Written 2/07/2025
Birch Grove
By Isaac Levitan
Pools, rivers of sun
Do run their emerald courses
And drink deep of the grazing
Passed into that hazy distance
Where leaves paint their harmonies
Ebenezers, all of them
These scarred ivories
Each a tombstone of their seed
Each cut from clotted green
To be a tree, both noble and tall
In this hall of grass and branch
This grove is home to peaces
Where green grass smothers,
Covers dead leaves
To dream of its being
Deathless
Written 24/12/2025
A Couple (Les Fiancés)
By Pierre-Auguste Renoir
He broke the starched, stiff collar
She heaved up weighty pearls
Like the cracking sail, the dripping anchor
They are now out at sea
In their eyes and what lies between
Sinking must be now
In the sheer and in the canvas
In the sharing of hands thus
For the rising of one brighter flag
Written 5/12/2025
Blue Water-Lilies
By Claude Monet
Those tendrils keep
These pads in place
Like they’ve caught a wreath
For some water wraith
Such a puppet show
Held by blue below
Is sad and shaded now
And I must say it’s
Drifting off from me
Written 31/12/2025
In the boat
By Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin
The little boat rocks into these reeds
Under the leaves, across from those lilies
Where he will read and she may wait
While in the time between
We’ll come away from that bank
And from their boat
Written 18/11/2025
Landscape Near San Sebastian
By Joaquín Sorolla
Who is she who walks while in shade
Radiant as the dove in the Sun?
Who is she who humbly dims
To the whims of nature’s breathing?
She is she who won’t fear her life
She is she whose white robes will not stain
She is she who grieves for the road’s slain
Who is she in whom hills delight
And sing to carry her homewards?
Who is she whose way is through dried blood
Love that is old and burdens now done with?
She is she who has come out of shadows
She is she who approaches the sunshine
She is she with a new skin for new wine
Who is she whose tomb is emboldened
And golden like an empress’s throne room?
Who is she who wears as a circlet
Day’s circuit and golden train?
She is she who would love me but second
She is she who sees me but budding
She is she who is learning true loving
Written 25/04/2025
The Boat. Monet in his Studio Boat
By Édouard Manet
It takes an unsteady hand to hold the brush
When waves come to tease the hull
One needs the patience and grace of sailors
With the temper and constitution of painters
And one needs fair skies,
If the air ever bred them
Let them who watch take heed
How he leaves his sleeves to the breeze
Indeed, a hat, too, the brim for framing
And teaching the canvas the rules of game
Which one has learned with their feet firm
Stood aside, a solid, a term
Written 27/10/2025
Sita and Sarita
By Cecilia Beaux
I know she watches you
I felt her skull turn
The fur combed my fingers
The warm and the stern
Take a seat, she sees you
Tell me how you do
Yes, I am listening
Though I listen beyond you
They’ve given me this sofa
For to sit and ponder
So it’s on both behalf
That she takes our wanders
6/04/2025