After El
Greco
Maxine Susman
The burnished hour arrives,
too late to light candles.
Tangerines and olives,
wine sweet for winter.
El Greco’s final altarpiece—
luminous blues,
the flat of white and gray,
the pits of eyes.
Sometimes a red
not true to nature.
An outsize wraith
billowing upward,
levitating sole to crown,
face pallid with faith,
torso like a taper,
vision past sight.
Dream Catcher for
Erica
Sheila Gardiner
What is it they always say? Wraith-like,
yes.
And she really is as she lies on her bed,
it being part of her paralysis of twenty years—
so light upon it you think immediately of sparrows’
wings; her arm raised straight, head tilted back,
face sharply thin as a fox’s.
She’s talking silently to the dream catcher overhead
as it moves in the eucalyptus air.
It is the crystal prism deep inside the catcher
that sends messages she returns.
I don’t doubt any of this.
She could levitate at will, float out
on that eucalyptus air, weightless as moonlight,
perhaps remembered by earthlings (as she calls us)
as the prophetic angel.
But remembered better, I’d say, for her mercurial self,
the wry wisdom, dismissive laugh. Certainly not
for the sorrows, large and small, to be suffered along the way.
Signs
Judith McNally
I have just been to a lecture on
semiotics. These words
made of these letters are arbitrary signs. Meanwhile
my cat scratches his ear. This is a sign that his ear itches.
Sometimes he scratches when he has fleas. Fleas are a sign
that I live in a rural area. This is a sign that I prefer
not to live in a city. Sunrise here is a sign the day has begun,
and sunset takes its sweet time, a clear sign that the idea
is to slow down and enjoy the day, one breath, the next.
Breathing is a sign of life, and being is itself a sign
of the miraculous, so relax, take your shoes off, the lecture
is over.
