Disappointment, by Lorette C. Luzajic

Water Lilies, by Claude Monet (France) 1919

Disappointment
 
I imagined Monet in his mist, shrouded by morning’s last weight. Claude evaporating with the water, pushing pond lilies to the side of the pirogue with a tender oar, lifting the slimy pads to new light with a lover’s hand. I’d read about his love affair with the lilies, felt flush thinking of the intimacy of his long looking. The caress of paint, in pursuit of pure beauty, how he dusted every water lily pad at dawn. It was an obsession against nature interfering with nature, recording truth that isn’t truth, the artist taking her virginal, wiped clean, back to the start, again and again. The spell snapped like first love, shattered, upon learning about the maid. Claude hired a cleaning lady to tend to his passions, someone to dust and wipe his water flowers before he painted them. Another arrow through the heart of poetry. Well, then. Morning has broken.

Lorette C. Luzajic

This poem first appeared in Pretty Time Machine: ekphrastic prose poems (Mixed Up Media Books, 2020.)

Lorette C. Luzajic is from Toronto, Canada. Her prose poetry and small fictions are widely published, with recent or forthcoming appearances in Gyroscope, Free Flash Fiction, Bright Flash, Club Plum, Red Eft, and Indelible. A recent story won first place in a contest at MacQueen’s Quinterly, and she has been nominated several times each for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her most recent of five poetry collections is Pretty Time Machine: ekphrastic prose poems. Some of her works have been translated into Urdu. Lorette is founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She is also an award-winning visual artist, with collectors in 25 countries from Estonia to Qatar. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.