Lavender Mist, by Henry Crawford

Lavender Mist, by Jackson Pollock (USA) 1950

 
Lavender Mist

With your pots and paints
on some faraway Long Island.
Lucky Strike burning in your mouth.
Lee on eggshells looking in.
Coffee cans of rubbed-out butts.
Shaky hands spinning away
your limitless craft.
What colour next? What brush?
Sand flies outside waiting.

Drunk on the vapors
of flying paint. Tossing out lines
of falling light. Each space
bearing the weight of its
reckless cargo. Fixing in place
for all time this moment
itself forever gone. 

Standing before you as a child
I thought it strange
they let you do this work.
But you had no choice
only the green of sandy pines,
the dull buff of forgotten footprints
and the waves exploding colour
on that Montauk ocean
and all the oceans after that.

Henry Crawford

Henry Crawford is a poet whose work has appeared in several journals and online publications. His first collection of poetry, American Software, was published in 2017 by CW Books. His second collection of poetry, The Binary Planet, is scheduled for publication by The Word Works in the spring of 2020. His poem "The Fruits of Famine" won first prize in the 2019 World Food Poetry Competition. His poem "Blackout" was selected by the Southern Humanities Review as a finalist in the 2018 Jake Adam York Witness Poetry Contest. His poem "Making an Auto Insurance Claim" was selected as an honourable mention in Winning Writer’s 2019 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest. His multi-media poem, "Gettysburg Auto Tour" is a finalist for this year's Deanna Tulley Multimedia contest. His website is HenryCrawfordPoetry.com and his online gallery is HenryCrawfordPoetry.com/poems/online.