The Gown, by Diane Fahey

Woman at the Window, by Caspar David Friedrich (Germany) 1822

The Gown 

1.
To love symmetry is to love
asymmetry – 

as this artist did, summoning 
the jagged edges of

a wilderness of broken ice, 
of chalk cliffs 

framing small-scale scenes of 
human presence

before some mist-confounded 
vista of infinity.

*

An austere, orderly studio
such as this one – 

a box of geometric shapes – 
can be transformed by 

a latch window drawn open
to admit the day,

and even more so, as now, 
by this living figure

standing in a luminance
that speaks of

inner light and bodily light,
her feet delicately earthed.

Garbed in a silk gown 
whose patina of 

coppery gold points up 
the solacing strength of green,

Caroline, the painter's wife,
looks out.

2.
There are starlings and hummingbirds
(emerald starlings in West Africa, for one,
and, say, the ruby-throated hummingbird)
who, at rest or in flight, wear

the slippery, glittery life of green: 
images that hover as I view 
the green falls and folds of Caroline's gown, 
its honeyed burnish.

For Friedrich, though – such a northern-souled man – 
those colours might well have evoked 
pine forests needled by sun rays,
trunks with syrupy glints of resin.

3.
Is Caroline, as pictured here, 
a resplendent bird in a cage
or, with her open gaze,
a pathway into that soft spring view – 

a lacy haze of poplars 
in their first green, beyond the river.
Above the faint rigging lines of ships,
a fleet of clouds buoys along.

Her body, poised in an easy lilt,
tilts forwards, leftwards,
while the mast of a passing ship 
tilts, by a whisker, to the right.

Will her spirit climb the airy heights 
caught in that grid above her?
If so, may some murmuration,
ever unfolding, journey with her.

On the sill, stoppered bottles of oil 
to prime tints that will magic up  
her lissom posture, wreathed coiffure,
play its part in this quiet glory.

Diane Fahey

Diane Fahey is the author of sixteen poetry collections, most recently The Light Café (Liquid Amber Press, 2023) and Sanctuaries (Puncher & Wattmann, 2024). She has received various awards and fellowships for her poetry, including the ACT Government’s Judith Wright Prize, and been short-listed for six other major book awards. Her poetry has been published widely in Australia and internationally, over a period of forty years, and been represented in over 80 anthologies, most recently in Buzz Words and Spellbound (Penguin Random House). Her PhD in Creative Writing from UWS is titled 'Places and Spaces of the Writing Life.' <dianefaheypoet.com>