Mondrian by Alarie Tennille

Composition with Blue and Yellow, by Piet Mondrian, 1935.

Mondrian: Composition with Blue and Yellow (1935)
 
You stand above the city
streets swaying to Big Band
music playing in the distance.
The girders of this high rise banish
your fear of heights. Sunlight
and water, structure and space
find their balance.
 
You say you could paint this?
Look again. Simplicity this good
is complicated. Pull out a single
line and play Pick Up Sticks. Add
one: the domino tilts and topples
the stack.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. She became fascinated by fine art at an early age, even though she had to go to the World Book Encyclopedia to find it. Today she visits museums everywhere she travels and spends time at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, where her husband is a volunteer guide. Alarie’s poetry book, Running Counterclockwise, contains many ekphrastic poems. Please visit her at alariepoet.com.