Still Life, by Grace Marie Grafton

Landscape with White Wall, by Gabrielle Munter (Germany). 1910.

Still Life
        
The mountain’s lassitude weights
the significance of the house’s red roof,
links form to form, the way
order comforts the mind, diminishes
storm’s jeopardy.  Its roil, its froth.
Instead, reminiscent of Bach’s contrapuntal
reliability – each note’s clarity tilted,
turned carefully on its side by echo and time –
the mountain’s rise and reach
mime roof’s angle and altitude.  Tree
shaped like a woman’s dark skirt,
unswirling, unmolested by wind.
To hide in tree branches above the white
wall.  The wall a grandfather’s steady
tread.  Sun a commonplace guardian.
This is what a child partially wants:
to recognize her world, rendered in
kin.  From which she can safely 
long for cloud’s umber irregularity, 
its tickle of the corpulent sun, its unseemly
absence of beatitude.

Grace Marie Grafton

Grace Marie Grafton’s most recent book, Jester, was published by Hip Pocket Press. She is the author of six collections of poetry.  Her poems won first prize in the Soul Making contest (PEN women, San Francisco), in the annual Bellingham Review contest, Honorable Mention from Anderbo and Sycamore Review, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Poems recently appear in Basalt, Sin Fronteras, The Cortland Review, Canary, CA Quarterly, Askew, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Ambush Review.