Can a wall be empty – sometimes that is the word to describe a space …it becomes…
An Invitation
I moved the furniture
to make it cosy as the winter comes
which is fine and good,
but now there is a space
where the bookcase stood.
The bare wall invites, image, picture, frame
that will enhance my home.
This invitation spoils my looking,
that empty wall intrudes its vacancy
on every picture in the gallery I visit.
I try to open my heart,
let eyes find the freshness of Diana
these women bidden to the Hunt
within the forest half hidden
by its leaves, and golden paint.
Or was it the frame was gold
that I recall to place upon my wall?
and so while seeing vacancy of wall
I muse on vacancy of mind
so rarely vacant.
No open mind brought anywhere to look,
just see, take in the track of a reality,
present, there hidden in the host of places
spaces generous and greedy.
My mind is full of things might matter
and my hope that I will find
between the cracks of aimless chatter
a thing that covers up that space.
When there among the forest’s paint
one small animal lying low
the painter of that picture was inclined to show
And so at last the invitation comes,
I see the picture he has painted
or, at least, some.
I visited the new Scottish Gallery at Edinburgh’s National Gallery, where among other pictures, I was looking at Robert Burns: The Hunt (no, not the poet, the artist with the same name). The monkey face is in the top left corner. And the jaguars are magnificent.
Poetry of Moods and Moments 