We Are Living in Magritte Weather, by Barbara Crooker

The Battle of Argonne, by Rene Magritte (Belgium). 1959.

We Are Living in Magritte Weather;

above our heads, in “The Battle of the Argonne,”
floats a luminous cloud and a granite stone,
history’s opposing forces, dividing night
from day.  You can’t see us in the painting;
everything human’s reduced in scale, the kind
of tiny town an electric train runs through.
But we’re there, in the shadows, beside the small
barn, still doing our work, tending our gardens,
while generals mass their armies, and politicians plot
their next moves.  Beneath our feet, more stones,
dreaming their flinty dreams.  They neither yearn
for more nor envy their neighbors.  They roll where
gravity takes them, gather moss and starlight.
They remember glaciers, and they praise the sun.
If you lie on the ground in the moonlight,
they will whisper what you need to save your life.

Barbara Crooker

This poem was previously published in Barbara Crooker's book, More (C&R Press, 2010). Click here.
 
Barbara Crooker is the author of eight books of poetry; Les Fauves is the most recent.  Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, The Poetry of Presence and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, and she has received a number of awards, including the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Literature.