Monet’s Winter on the Seine, Lavacourt, by Jack Ridl

Winter on the Seine, Lavacourt, by Claude Monet (France) 1879-1880.

Monet’s Winter on the Seine, Lavacourt
 
These blues were never in the world.
He would have had to let his palette
 
find this benign freeze, this landscape
still as a stoic’s paradise. The ice must
 
have lain beneath his frayed gray gloves
as he thrust his brush stiff across
 
the canvas. His red spreads from the sun.
Nothing else moves. In this infinity
 
of cold, this pitiless lucidity of fading light,
the dead walk across the river into town.

Jack Ridl


Jack Ridl's Practicing to Walk Like a Heron was named best collection of poetry for 2013 by Indiefab/ForeWord Reviews. His collection Broken Symmetry was selected by The Society of Midland Authors as the best collection of poetry for 2006. Billy Collins selected his Against Elegies for the Center for Book Arts (NYC) Chapbook Award. In April his new collection Saint Peter and the Goldfinch will be released. All three full collections are from Wayne State University Press.