My wife is a talented artist and on good days I think of myself as an adequate poet (part time). We see the world differently and the same...
Artist and Poet at Odds
The poet tried to describe an apple tree.
Where to begin?
The arc of the apple branches straining
under the weight of an unpicked
October harvest.
or maybe like this...
A selection of scale and distance
beginning with the individual apple,
its intense dark red against the gray
backdrop of snow threatening clouds.
I know...
Perhaps, begin with the apple tree
as seen from a distance within the
context of the whole.
A lone tree, devoid of orchard,
growing stalward along a residential street,
leaves strewn on black cracked pavement.
The artist has it easy with
pallet and brush to paint the likeness
of the apple tree in true form, with
colour and texture to taste.
An apple tree in a cubist form, fracture an image in abstraction,
in Monet soft tones reversing the rules of realism,
paint with emotion in the medium of your choice
with rigid design or spontaneous starts.
How can the poet render the tree
merely working with words,
vague and inadequate tools at best.
Imagine that the apples mock gravity, failing to drop,
hanging to wildly waving branches patiently
waiting for birds to pluck their defenceless cores and
Spring will come with inevitable rot.
What can the artist do but capture the moment?
The poet is left to mere words and imagination.
Apples are so complex.
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