John Everett Millais' Ophelia Wind stirring branches beats the windows, as a storm pours over the gutters that have given up like Hamlet who could not even save his love from drowning. Asters wave their red wands in the current, Nile lilies gasp, going under. I dream of Lizzie Siddal in a two story walk-up where John Everett Millais has dressed her in a pool with deep cut banks, her auburn hair pulled free. A little thunder, a zipper of lightning scoring the post oak in the front yard carries me to a London afternoon when I stopped to visit Lizzie at the Tate while my friends wandered off to sketch friezes and nudes. After forty years, what have I forgotten of Millais’ Ophelia: phlox, delphinium, a blue stream that just fit her body, water lilies bearing her lightly in their arms? Once, in another electric storm, lightning cracked behind the second story farmhouse window where my wife’s hair rose in the surge and all the lights blew. In the stillness we could hear the guzzle of bright cold water pouring off the roof as the wind dredged deep channels through galleries of corn, leaves bent and turning palms up in the current, while lancets of rain furrowed the field. I slipped into a dream of floating in the moonlight miracle of earth turned to water. Even here in Oklahoma one life might be exchanged for another. Markham Johnson Markham Johnson won the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod, and his first poetry collection was published by the University Press of Florida. He has an MFA from Vermont College, and his poems have been published widely in magazines including Nine Mile, Coal Hill, and Library Journal.
1 Comment
5/4/2022 02:06:39 pm
With deep cut banks, her auburn hair pulled free. A little thunder, a zipper of lightning, Thank you for the beautiful post!
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September 2024
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