Five After the Landseer Brothers, by Julie Gonnering Lein

A river scene, with an otter eating a fish, a sketch by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (England) before 1873

​A Landseer: A River Scene, with an Otter Eating a Fish, a Sketch 
 
Oil on Board
 
Lithe and lithic there among boulders - 
            sleek flanks in shadow, downturned
                         ear and darkened eye swiveled 
 
from sunlight: what to make 
             of this scene, devouring 
                          slender-silvered, ichthyic shivers 
 
through teeth, through throat, the slide through current 
              chocked with wood and stone? As lingual 
                           submerged tail stirs silt, a rival
 
animal, or eddy pool, slips beneath and past. 
             It could almost be the otter’s unimpeded
                shadow, elongated, fish-flat, reversing
 
to head the other direction - a feral 
             murky presence gliding from its furtive 
                         fellow’s dim peripheral view. Or is it you
 
the otter eyes? What ethic sieves the savours 
              you permit to cross your mouth? What swallows
                             the shine-skived surfaces, chews indentation
 
cadences in rock, in branch and bone? Beyond the deeper 
               gloaming and green thickets, the sketch gives rise 
                             to some deferred lambent calm only  
 
hinted, hovering in upper bounds of this riparian scene. 
             Shadow, otter, water align to that inscrutable glow. 
                           River, I sing concurrence: we take each other in.

A stag with it's [sic] antlers carried away by a nymph, by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (England) before 1873

​A Landseer: A Stag with It’s [sic] Antlers Carried Away by a Nymph 
 
Pen and Brown Ink and Brown Wash, Watermark ‘J WHATMAN’
 
In spring he’d sprouted stamens (‘also stamina’) - 
perpetual work and burden of his skull - vascular
velveteen anthers a potent ochre promise.
 
In turn matured, they’d spread - ossified crown 
of his own making, proud pinnacle a dead display, 
his weapon overhead. Then when his strength 
 
gave out, they fell from pedicles - those ovoid 
open wounds tender, tender as a signature
rendering regular rhythms of loss, relief, a life. 
 
So when he sees her lift them (along with him), 
awash in fairy chaff and sepia, does he recognize 
his cast-off rack? Is he awed to rise above Arcadia’s 
 
ashen copse cornered away? Do outlined auburn 
fronds refine and fan that arch? Is ache centripetal? 
He’s tucked his legs out of sight. Old nimbleness 
 
is useless here. Prone and limbless, rapt, adoring
as an acolyte, he watches her with limitless restraint. 
His faith is rasped and raw. His antlers are a letter 
 
carried off: multipronged {Y} whose cusps curve to transfix,
held aloft in her unadorned arms, extending a graft  
akin to infinite query. And all of this on paper thinned 
 
to embed suspension’s hooked initial, watermarked What-
man to be read by light: inherent unknown quarry
to be carried away on wings. On winds, unwearied.

A Partly Dissected Head of a Horse, Seen from the Front, by Charles or Edwin Landseer (England) before 1879

​A Landseer: A Partly Dissected Head of a Horse, Seen from the Front 
 
Black, Red, and White Chalk on Buff Paper
 
How, between the merest
outlines of an eye and ear
there appears in that tentative temporal 
 
space a triangular cast 
of light: before muscle, before 
even a cleanly-defined course of osteal
 
curves, the luminous first 
expresses dimension. Bare 
beyond nude. Opaque, paper-thin ghost potential 
 
layers through the artist’s 
triad tones to incarnate mare 
mouth and nostrils, her second ear and eye. Details
 
begin to reveal what’s past 
interior, exterior -  
unbridled brindled fibers; skin, its textural
 
hairs; the cupped ear’s earnest
attention; that eye, whose clear
horse gaze - pupil-dark, immense, long-lashed - is equal 
 
parts appraising, distant, kind. 
The broad bridge bone of her nose 
figures human form seen from behind. How those small
 
heart-shaped shoulders, the white-lined 
back, buttocks, rear thighs compose
a bowing subject --- or a diver’s aerial
 
poise before the plunge. To mind 
what’s (or who’s) before you shows 
remembrance: time, position, our common mortal
 
state - each mutable earth shined
find made versatile. Exposed, 
the suppliant-leaper stands suspended, chiral 
 
equine tendons a mirrored 
Y-shaped frame - one branch ending 
in the ruddy bud of a matchstick head, signal 
 
stock yet stalled, while its altered 
counterpart’s a rendering
of bloom enfleshed to flash of flame. Material 
 
burnishes, the chalk drawing 
me as Ezekiel’s words -  
Can these dry bones live? But that was the Lord’s vital 
 
question. You know. My dawning 
recognition rises: scorched 
écorché sears sacred, already miracle.

Study of rock and tree, by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (England) before 1873

A Landseer: Study of Rock and Tree
 
Oil on Board
 
Study not of sky - not today - let clouds waft 
unremarked. Let lilac uplift each cobalt 
smudge and scrub grass vagaries list in greens - their 
prone languid byways 
 
under wind, whose touch fondles each frond softly 
down the ridge. Nor study of sandstone wall, built 
yet abandoned, no place to dwell. It won’t share
window or doorway;
 
rough façade juts up as if baseless, drafted 
out of context (contrast, perhaps?) -  a scumbled
detached outlier in the landscape, a bare 
tabular foray 
 
now withdrawn. Attend, rather, this pair - their gifts
grafted, grit-fed. Study of Rock and Tree: burled 
boulder - burrowed wood in each other’s braced care,
intimate inlay.
 
Rock is sway, is refuge. An entry - where deft 
root and heart - in mutual habit humbled, 
coarse-grained, deep-veined - serve. Anniversary: rare,
open-eyed, each day.

The Sanctuary, by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (England) 1842

For her Majesty the Queen, this Engraving of The Sanctuary, after Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, R. A., from the Original Picture in the Royal Collection by Thomas Landseer (England) c. 1869

​After a Landseer, a Landseer: […] The Sanctuary […]
 
Print Engraving of Oil on Canvas
 
Now all the amber ambience 
has cooled to slate, and late sun pales 
the waning verge. The interstice
 
horizon blurs its salience, 
blue-to-blued-gray: sea, sky, hills veil 
the nacred amber ambience 
 
of day. The day’s pursuits suffice 
their evil. Where plumed arc avails
the waning verge - the interstice 
 
tide, sedge, and air - birds commence
migration to vanishing, hail
a novel amber ambience
 
beyond range. The deer’s auspices 
dilate. He staggers to shore, trails
its waning verge. From interstices 
 
of his steps: light’s long effluence.
Engraving’s transience - trace ails - 
renewal’s amber ambience - 
are wakening, verging into rest. 

Julie Gonnering Lein
​
Julie Gonnering Lein is author of the chapbooks Seed (South Dakota Poetry Society contest winner, 2024) and Glacier, Perfect Tense (dancing girl press). She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah, where she also served as a Poetry Editor of Quarterly West. Her work was shortlisted for the Helena Whitehill Book Award, and has won the Larry Levis Memorial Poetry Prize, the Hal Prize in Poetry, and the Winter Anthology Annual Contest among other honors. She lives in South Dakota’s Black Hills with her family.