Monet's Garden by Barry Dempster

The Artist's Garden at Giverny, by Claude Monet, 1900.

Monet’s Garden
 
                             A garden is not what you think…
                                                             Elizabeth Philips
 
 
Bad day, fevered, queasiness
running the length of my body
like long wet spider threads.
I imagine being back
in Giverny, bending over
a Japanese peony
breathing out instead of in,
dying into pale red folds. It’s
 
a June day, yellow, and buzzing,
with a faint whiff of pike
rising off the water lilies.
Bent over that peony, feeling
small like Toulouse-Lautrec,
his nose buried in a dancer’s skirts.
 
From the vantage point of a bee
I’m a surrealist
in an impressioned garden.
The lime trees across the way
are relieved they don’t
have to give bloom to me.
And the sky is the last blank page
in a coffee table art book.
 
A sick man means squat
in Monet’s garden:
petal dropped
                              petal lost.
 
p.s. colourful as it may seem
        this is an example
        of negative thinking, a waste
        of technicolour and sweat
        better to dream about jesus
        jumping out of a birthday cake
        of someone named veronica
        swallowing my house keys
 
       imagine
 
       if I’d been feeling positive
       picasso and his blue machete
       would have wrecked the place
       all those self-pitying flowers
       severed from their stems

Barry Dempster

Barry Dempster is an award winning poet, short story writer, novelist, editor, and writing instructor. This poem is from his book, The Burning Alphabet (Brick Books, 2005), which was a finalist for the prestigious Governor General Awards. Used with permission of the author.