Insight, by Shirley Glubka

Number 3, by Jackson Pollock (USA) 1948.

Insight
​
With fated accidental bold abstraction he
caught my soul on canvas, he who never knew me.
I knew him, or knew the painting, never him,
unless his soul was there in paint, a scrap at least,

arms open, catching mine. I'd never seen the work  
till then, but recognized myself. A self I'd never seen.
Always I'd assumed one chose and settled in—defined—
inside the confines of a single life when time enough

had passed and all, or almost all, was sorted out.
If any art might echo what I chose, it would be
subtle, gentle, mild. My life was moderate.
But this was daring, brave. Forest green thrust up

a clutch of striking reds and vivid tangerines.
And was there ever such a brightness, cream and
black, to ricochet around a world of paint? Bright
cream, bright black, to pull the willing reds and

tangerines to vibrant circling over steady
forest green. This was, I saw, my soul, or
one of them. An early version, or a late, when
I had been, or was to be, more than I knew.

​Shirley Glubka    

​Shirley Glubka is a retired psychotherapist, the author of four poetry collections, a mixed genre collection, and two novels. Her latest poetry collection is Through the Fracture in the I: Erasure Poetry; her most recent novel: The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh. Shirley lives in Prospect, Maine with her spouse, Virginia Holmes. Website: http://shirleyglubka.weebly.com/ Online poetry at The Ekphrastic Review here; at 2River View here; at The Ghazal Page here; and at Unlost Journal here and here.