Show Me the Monet, by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Water Lily Pond, by Claude Monet (France) 1899

Show Me the Monet

Serenely and divinely Japanese!
How else could one describe Claude's garden scene
Of water lilies under willow trees
Where nature has been made to look pristine?
Maybe instead describe it as a fraud:
East meeting west where you and I are conned
To think the garden's how 'twas seen by Claude! ...
Have you not wondered if his painted pond
Erased a truth? I mean discarded junk,
Moved out of sight by short and deft brush strokes,
Oils gracing canvas, till you would have thunk
No one could guess Claude played the best of jokes—--
Except if they had seen a shopping cart
Tipped over in the pond in Banksy's art!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

This first appeared in Rat's Ass Review.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. One of his acrostic sonnets won the Adult Category of the Southern Shakespeare Company's 2020 Sonnet Contest.  Other acrostic sonnets have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist and other journals. He also writes limericks, several of which have appeared in Britain's Daily Mail.