This is a church right across the street from our new apartment in Cincinnati. We have moved into a historic district which reveals new things with each walk we take around the neighborhood.
The drive across country was a series of things being revealed. In Itasca, Ani pointed out a cardinal excitedly, fascinated with how the actual red of the cardinal is a different from what she envisions in her head. I told her to sketch it. She responded: How do you sketch that red?
**
A few weeks before the move I was delighted to receive from Miriam Sagan herself a copy of her book “Seven Places in America: A Poetic Sojourn.” The poems and essays in the book follow Sagan as she travels to seven places and documents the life lived and seen. It was a great guide for my own poetic sojourn, and the inspiration for my post last week.
The poem below is one of a number poems in Sagan’s book that create their magic through a series of short lyrics. There’s something about the short lyric that is ideal for travel. When you travel there is so much to see – you can barely take it all in, much less write about it.
How do you sketch that red?
One line at a time.
**
Sketches in a Notebook – Miriam Sagan
a lizard
living
in a rolled up shade
tree bromeliads –
two cormorants
build a nest of twigs
man with a cane
crosses path with
a tiny turtle
child pats the palm tree
ignores
the alligator
tree canopy
butterfly, and purple glade
morning glory
rare buttonwood vine
looks like any foliage –
but rare –
a leaf drops in
the mahogany hammock –
without season
out of the palm trees
a peacock darts – escaped –
but from where?
tree snail gleams
in the leaf canopy –
stolen ghost orchid
raindrops’ circles –
yellow spatterdock flowers
floating green pods –
two shy vultures
pick raindrops
off the car’s roof
only the most
delicate colored pencils
draw the tree snail’s shell
cypresses
drawn in an inky line,
overcast afternoon
leaf’s
drop tip
implies rain
**
Happy implying!
Jose
