December-January 2025
Shell Gatherer on the Beach
By Jan Toorop
Pulled into dissolution
This sandstorm took my skin
My feet were taken
By the tide
My world is growing sparse
Fading fast
Tearing my cart to two
Give me my cart
Please, give it
I beg for my cart
I claw at my cart
I despair for it
Give it
Give me my cart
Written 11/07/2025
Gitana
By Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
When one is of flowed seams –
They lap as harmony
Robes of oak lapis
Bejewelled as rivers run –
When one emerges into form –
The chaos is made to stand
It must give account
To air in this time –
Then thoughts prop open –
They flow from the eyes
They land over ground
Thy hand is their guide –
That grace may be in the face
That takes fierce consideration
Written 30/08/2025
The Drawbridge
By Vincent van Gogh
In later hours, the drawbridge rises
For now, it wakes with walkers
All night the river ran singing
Beneath the bridge’s thin chest
Shining up with its liquid breast
The bridge is thick
As some count thickness
And simple
As simplicity comes
Hardly considered as days are run
For now the sun tows up its clouds
Night’s slick rendezvous departs
And the bridge’s back bears souls
Bears up for boats
Long settled into this green coat
But brick has stuck
Old ropes still go
As heard as birds
Known thin shadows noticed as sky
As brick drawbridge passes lives by
Written 24/09/2025
Portrait of Pére Tanguy
By Vincent van Gogh
Father, how, in the end, did they forget your name?
Was it lost in rout or in mess?
Did it fall into your collection
For no longer is it kept
I placed my name on tubes of paint
Who were purposed to die
And to lose it at the artist’s hand
Was my greatest pride
Where shall I find your face, my father?
No statues did they make
Please God, I would see you again
Before our memory fades
Pedrolino painted me
As thanks and to exalt
He has shaped my memory
Brought it in from the cold
Written 19/08/2025
Water Lilies (1903)
By Claude Monet
When Jacob saw the stairway
Did it use a rail?
Did angels trod or use their wings?
Were the landings veiled?
Has it now come down to us
And settled in a pond
That lily steps should float so flat
On roads to great beyonds?
Written 13/08/2025
The Kingfishers
By Emile Claus
‘Quick now, but steady on’
The tree tears watch them run
‘Quick now, but steady on’
They set their skates on ice
And laugh on countable days
Glide like kingfishers
Sweep over ice
Bend boughs and fly
Let friction break down
And see only snow
And the Sun on the snow
And the clouds upon the Sun
All yellow and jovial
Patient in their
Sheering birdsong
Because when they have broadened their chests
This same winter
Will rob their dear nests
‘Quick now, but steady on’
Written 7/01/2025
Awakening Girl
By Eva Gonzalès
Waking girl, won’t you wake faster
Your father has gone
Out in the pasture
Your brother has left
To follow his love
Now all that’s left is for you to wake up
Your mother left three hours ago
With her hat and the mule
On an old stony road
She’s gone into town
To sell all the grain
It's three months too soon but the rain never came
Waking girl, you have to get up now
Your father is out there
With bent back and low plough
His son has gone
So the daughter must help
He says to himself, ‘Well, I’ll see him in hell’
The baby’s alone when its mother’s in town
Its father and sister
Stay out with the plough
Sister, hold baby
Then harvest some more
Its love and its stomach depend on your chores
Waking girl, now as you awake
Take five light minutes
Pray for the rain
Pray for kind buyers
Pray for cows’ wombs
Pray that your dreams of silk sheets come true
Try not to think of your wayfaring brother
Not of the ten pillows
He shares with his lover
Don’t think of the flowers
She keeps by her bed
Think of poor father and mother instead
Written 7/11/2025