One-Eyed Church, by Julia Griffin

Gelmeroda, by Lyonel Feininger (USA) 1936

One-Eyed Church
​
​How does its head stay on its vanished neck?
And that green eye touching the witch’s hat:
Does it look up or out? Great panes of lake-
Blue sky hold up its shadow, each one slit,
Envelope-fashion.  Funny how its rock-
White skirt dissolves in front, thin as a net,
While on its left, the hazel-coloured stack
Of roof over the barn-shape seems to float.
The sides are pressing in.  It must be late;
A squarish star’s dotting the hat tip, look;
The green-eyed witch-tower stands there, jaw stuck out,
Not noticing at all that tiny dark
Spidery whooshing thing low on its right,
Plucked out of space: my secret satellite.
 
Julia Griffin

Author's note: "One Eyed Church" is how Lyonel Feininger's Gelmeroda Church seemed to me in my childhood: a wedding gift to my parents from my dead Uncle Geoffrey, always on some room’s wall.

​Julia Griffin lives in south-east Georgia.  She has published in several online poetry magazines, including Light, Classical Outlook, Snakeskin Poetry, and The Ekphrastic Review.