The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Instructions for a Modest Project, Granville Redmond’s Carmel Coast, c. 1917, by Mary B. Moore

8/16/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Carmel Coast, by Granville Redmond (USA) 1917, some sources 1920

Instructions for a Modest Project, 
Granville Redmond’s Carmel Coast, c. 1917.

 
Don’t strut. Muddle and meander 
the beach’s slight creases,
the one shallow gully that side-winds
toward the low V where the sea
shows. Be mauve like that channel.  
If purple, be grayer.  Yield to wind. 
The scrubby junipers lie low,
and the cypress flattens
and contorts, wind battered.
One limb crooks nearly 
90 degrees; two form 
an almost X;
and all rise and fork,
a system of W’s, Y’s,
and indecisions.  It queries,
doesn’t answer, and bows.
Let your alphabet mute
and mutate. The ice plant scrawls
whatever shapes it crawls,
blue-gray-green spatters,
little stubby fingers,
many reaching sideways.
Succulent and named for its frost-
sheen look, it’s lush not frigid,
and unrelenting. In bloom, 
the magenta flowers dazzle,
fifty or more thin petals 
fringing the yellow centers:
Fiesta if you must:
Redmond omitted their boast.
His dry runnels don’t pout;
They channel gray and tan
tinged green.
Sunset or dawn barely
pinks the clouds’ irregular
rows or wave forms,
and the marine layer 
chalks the horizon
lavender or violet:
Avoid crescendos.
If the cypress’s bent
proves wind’s violence,
its angle fits the slight
slope that lends 
it shelter. It’s brown-green, 
not viridian.
Muted isn’t moot.
 
Mary B. Moore

Mary B. Moore's recent award-winning books are Amanda and the Man Soul (Emrys, 2017), Flicker (Dogfish Head, 2016), and Eating the Light (Sable, 2016), selected respectively by contest judges Dorianne Laux, Carol Frost et al, and Allison Joseph. She also won the inaugural Three Sisters Award from NELLE (2019), and the second-place prize at Nimrodin 2017. Her poems appeared lately in Poetry; 32 Poems; Prairie Schooner; GeorgiaReview; Gettysburg Review; Terrain; The Ekphrastic Review; Fire and Rain, Eco-Poetry of California; The Nasty Women Poet’s Anthology; NELLE; and Birmingham Poetry Review. A native Californian, she taught English at Marshall University, has one daughter, an attorney in Northern California, and lives with her husband, a philosopher, and the cat Seamus Heaney, in Huntington West Virginia.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    Picture
    COOKIES/PRIVACY

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Join us: Facebook and Bluesky
    @ekphrasticreview.



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic [email protected] 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead