Paintings, Fallen in the Field, Severance Rehearsal

Paintings

Carrying paintings from storage to living-room,

hanging them for dissection by light, the artist’s work

is under scrutiny of the camera. Chronicles of

misfortune, sharp as contracted pupils, plus the

immeasurable tenderness of women, have endured.

There were photograph albums in the attic,

black, heavy, bound with brass screws.

My father constructed them so that

when self-worth was low, we had a chronicle.

Fallen in the field

Tree’s boughs are fractured, trunk is snapped.

Ash had escaped chain-sawing farmers for whom

it had been both obstruction and potential firewood,

because in youth, they had carved names.

Fairies and foxgloves had long departed,

plough cutting closer each year. Vitality,

settings clasping jade in grandmother’s necklace,

had weakened, tree scattering its galaxy of green.

Chain-saw men spray wood-shine. In nearby

muddy puddles, reflected upside-down birch trees

scatter leaves, ocher and umber,

creating a new meniscus of enchantment.

Severance Rehearsal

Putting a few into space to ogle earth

(paying a ransom for the privilege) and hearing

Virgin’s man calling his ship sexy seems perverse.

Whenever resources are placed at the disposal

of vainglory, a tryst with nature is broken.

Yet the spirit of adventure is uncontainable!

Mirroring his disease, cyborg Hawkins collapses

boundaries and time. Seizing the fiction

of cryogenics to reach goldilocks regions, 

he imagines humans constructing replicas of Dubai.

Space travel is past’s severance rehearsal.

Yet existence reveals meaning simply by

become immersed in it.

The petal as it falls makes music;

dissolution of form and eternal transience

being an orchestra needing no director.

By Misha Norland