Working it Out

by N Filbert

My Wife…Painting, or Thereabouts (another definition of ekphrasis) or, making it, together

“what we need is that which we see, hear, and touch for a single moment,

and which is then consumed and replaced by a similar stimulus”

-Eugenio Montale-

“for the practice of the style of truth to become a thing of the present,

poetry must become a thing of the past”

-Laura (Riding) Jackson-

I breathe.

I seek.

Next to me a burning cigarette.

My right hand – a blue pen.

I sit.

Coffee steams.

Outside: light fog, hardly rain.

My interior: vibratory,

with sudden calm…

(/)

She.

She steps.

Back and forth, across and over.

One hand, a palette.

The other, a brush.

She moves in her space like a bird.

Forward, back, peck, adjust.

Things happen.

I am calm.

(/)

As if piecing a puzzle

or measuring in milligrams

I tinker, tweezer and arrange;

start again,

while she strokes, dances,

loves and flows -

it rocks me like a cradle;

she opens her wings -

colour, tone, and shape -

happen and become

filling all with substance of signs

(/)

meanwhile the cigarette, smoldering, goes out

requiring another, or be relit;

one moment, the next,

terming my tinker toys

now this, now that

so very thin on the page

and monotone.

(/)

I see her body wiggle pleasingly

as a Prussian Blue starts to storm

swiped by a towel

scraped with a knife

marred and torn by her instrument hands -

while I toss the words like diced vegetables,

drop-shuffling my pack of cards

again to build a house,

such fragile construct.

(/)

Am I soothed by her velocity of matter?

That sheer difficulty of erasure

infers a hearty permanence?

Both seeing, hearing and touching this moment

and leaving our remains,

consumed and productive -

stimulus again?

N Filbert 2012