Figures on the Seashore, by Kyle Laws

Figures on the Seashore, by Pablo Picasso (Spain). 1931.

Figures on the Seashore

A woman must start at the sea,
swim up out of depths of creation,
to deserts, high plains, mountains.
Each landscape is further from her natural self.
The ascension requires effort, rising up
to what could be the fall of one pine to another
just below a peak the narrow trail leads to. 
In San Isabel Forest, above Beulah--
where women hang paintings in a cafe,
and no one comes to a spring opening
because of snow—there's a staccato beat
of woodpecker in the clutter, hazardous if fire
would begin, but the top is clear with smooth
stones as the disjointed limbs on Picasso’s seashore.

Kyle Laws

Kyle Laws’ collections include This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017); So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015); Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014); My Visions Are As Real As Your Movies, Joan of Arc Says to Rudolph Valentino (Dancing Girl Press, 2013); and George Sand’s Haiti (co-winner of Poetry West’s 2012 award).  Faces of Fishing Creek is forthcoming in 2018 from Middle Creek Publishing.  With six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., and Canada.  She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.