The Cleveland Museum of Art has a wonderful collection of material they have put into the public domain, including the huge Monet painting, Water Lilies (Agapanthus), depicted in this post. The oil painting runs the lilies right off the edge of the artwork. There is no clear shoreline, no people or animals or structures beyond pond and water lilies depicted in the painting. It’s the impressionistic equivalent of taking a digital photo, picking one small portion of it, and then blowing that cropped portion up to something approximating life-size.
Poems that relate to other artwork are called ekphrastic (definition and examples at this link). They may be faithful descriptions, imagined descriptions, or inspired by the art in some way. Today’s poem falls into the “inspired by” category, because the lack of a shoreline allows one to imagine what may be outside the boundaries of the painting.
Waterlilies
waterlilies stretch
toward freedom, sunrise over glass
false sun, false nature
easy to deceive flora
unable to escape this pond
on the bank, a dog
picture so easy to reach
the dog's curls drip water
his ears prick, he knows the hum
somewhere there's love, homely, fleet
refusing to watch, Spring
struggles, intent, outward
memories arise
love or haunting or...what...
floats by unseasonal blooms
~~
It seems Monet made approximately 250 paintings of waterlilies, in all sorts of weather, lighting conditions, and setting. In the Northern US, we have early blooms already — daffodils, tulips, crocus, and so on. But no waterlilies yet.
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