Harmony in Blue and Gold by W.F. Lantry

The Peacock Room by James McNeill Whistler, 1876-1877

Harmony in Blue and Gold

I had no knowledge of the Peacock Room.
By hand she led me to the centered bench
and sat. I stepped away and turning back
saw her within her setting a first time.

It's gold and blue, if you must know, the walls
hand painted in repeating patterns. Frames
become the room, and vases, blue and white,
are everywhere in formal disarray.

It's like a room of verse. Pentameter
is just that, free but formal, like her clothes,
and just as rare: there is no other room
like this one, which is how it earned her love.

I made a promise to her then: to build
a room like that, and did, but now I think
these verses have become her Peacock Room
where she may live within what's beautiful.

W.F. Lantry

W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Terraced Mountain (Little Red Tree 2015), The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012) winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds (Finishing Line Chapbook 2011) and a forthcoming collection, The Book of Maps. He received his PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Recent honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry (US), CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and the Potomac Review and Old Red Kimono LaNelle Daniel Prizes. His work has appeared widely online and in print in journals such as Aesthetica, Gulf Coast and Valparaiso Poetry Review. He currently works in Washington, DC. and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.