Drift, 38"hx60"w, oil on canvas, 2009

“Poem Painting" series. These works were created in response to the sonnet sequence "Key Fallen to Blue" by Richard Robbins, from Other Americas published by Blueroad Press, copyright© 2010.

4.  Story

At the story, let the stiff rest of the body fly.
In Los Angeles, cool fog
made bread of the local hills. They could rise
without listening to freighter or barge

hauling each last thing away. His neighbor
went blind the day she turned 90, strayed
outside until she snagged in oleander,
crying for help until her daughter came.

What would it mean for him to tell this one
again? Or, instead, move her into mist,
and ships onto a deadly reef those tides
always talked about to the bright, poisonous
shrub? Now she is blind, she walks alone,
blankness the oldest lover at her side.