French Ultramarine, by Glenn Harrington

Fisherfolk Under the Cliffs, by Eugène Boudin (France) 1881

​French Ultramarine 

Aurochs run through the bowels of earth
flushed by flashlight on the walls at Lascaux
to the end of the tunnels of the cave where
a keyhole of azure sky floats in the black.

“We have learned nothing in 12,000 years”
Picasso said of the pigment-blown bovine,
but between these eras of primitive painters
Boudin anchored his easel out in the sunlight

on the coast of his hometown at La Harve 
painting in the spindrift breeze billowing
the sail of his stretched canvas, blowing
boats and clouds across the horizon and

ruffling the black taffeta dresses of women 
on holiday under the cliffs near fisherfolk 
along the shore where a cerulean keyhole 
was breaking through the darkening clouds.

Up the beach the boy Monet was giggling
drawing enormous noses on little frenchmen, 
he’d not yet met his local mentor, leading
him from exaggerations of truth, to truth, 

from a bedroom cave into the clouds parting
a keyhole of blue where he saw water lilies 
floating on the other side of the sky, where
Picasso was busy preparing for his blue period.

Glenn Harrington 

​Glenn Harrington is a painter and writer living in Bucks County Pennsylvania, where his poems and articles have been published in magazines and journals. He is at work on two books of poetry, Trysting Trees, and, Friku, a decade of weekly haiku exchanges with his brother, Mark, a writer for NY Newsday. Glenn’s paintings have been exhibited internationally and featured in numerous publications including American Arts Quarterly, American Art Collector, and American Artist Magazine. His portraiture was awarded the Portrait Society of America’s Draper Grand Prize and he has been a frequent recipient of awards from the Oil Painters of America’s Annual Exhibitions.