Source, 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.

7.  Arms

Who peels back his skin to find cheap ransom
but the angel of that moment. She clears
a road to the interior, airways to friends
circling the planet. She was there

in black feathers with the man on gray rock.
At the beach, she nearly drowned with him,
all that salt and turn, the storm-rip taking
him deep and out. She was there at every rim

of heaven. Now she holds him to the air
he walks through. Now she holds him to the wounds
he and his wife exchange. Now she sets
table with all he ever thought he found
or lost. All of it blinks then, now. Blinks some day,
one day, at the far reaches of regret.