He hadn’t yet abandoned the shore
for the celestial, gone sailing with the gods
of fire and air. Confronted by immensity,
he places seven sailboats on the horizon line,
evenly spaced as a place setting. Amid vast green
ovals of water, sky and sea, blue and peach, the tiny boats
float, witty as elder aunts. The choice, they say,
is not between here and hereafter, but in here
and ignoring here. The boats head in but also recede
into the ocean sky’s tumble of color and light.
He hadn’t yet gone into worlds of white,
but an ecstatic rhythm was building. I’m mad
about the sea, he wrote. Obviously: he brushed
alight its hidden fires, love’s entrances and exits
prismed into one. In the umbrella pastels and cream wool-tufts
eternity leans into us. Still, that dark patch of sand
down at the canvas’s lower corner makes us feel
behind us is Madame Monet, calling
and calling him to lunch.

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Rachel Dacus has two books, Femme au chapeau and Earth Lessons, and two poetry CD’s, A God You Can Dance and Singing in the Pandaleshwar Caves. Her chapbook Another Circle of Delight will be published as part of Small Poetry Press’s Select Poet Series. She serves as contributing poetry editor for Umbrella (www.umbrellajournal.com) and is on the staff at The Alsop Review. More of her work can be read at www.dacushome.com and her blog at dacusrocket.blogspot.com.
 

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summer 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue