Winslow Homer Painting A Summer Night, by Joseph Stanton

A Summer's Night, by Winslow Homer (USA) 1890

Winslow Homer Painting A Summer Night
 
The two women are dancing in the moonlight,
twirling in between the glow of the house
and the gleam of the moon breaking on the sea--
 
turning and turning on the worn planking
of the porch that faces the rocky shore
where friends have gathered themselves
into piles of silhouettes
 
shored up against 
the play of light whitening
the robin’s-egg-blue sea
between grim gesturings of black rock.
 
This one’s dreaming smile reminds him of Helena,
and he suddenly sees
he must capture the wave spuming behind her.

Joseph Stanton

Read The Ekphrastic Review's interview with Joseph Stanton, here.
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Joseph Stanton is Professor Emeritus of Art History and American Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has published six books of poems: Moving Pictures, Things Seen, Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art, A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban Oahu, Cardinal Points, and What the Kite Thinks: A Linked Poem (co-authored with Makoto Ooka, Wing Tek Lum, and Jean Toyama). Over 500 of his poems have appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry, Harvard Review, New Letters, Poetry East, Ekphrasis, Image, Antioch Review, Cortland Review, New York Quarterly, and many others. His awards include the Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award, the Ekphrasis Prize, the James Vaughan Poetry Award, the Ka Palapala Pookela Award for Excellence in Literature, and the Cades Award for Literature.