10 Poems from “The Woman in the Imaginary Painting” by Tom Montag
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
An ancient
desire, to
paint the cave
walls, to put
some thing on
a surface
that reaches
deeper, a
blue hand, a
bison, this
woman. We
don't want to
see it end.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
Shall we
interrogate
her loveliness
or examine
the shape of
her features
or study
the way light
lays color
and line
on a texture
of canvas?
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
The woman
and the paint.
The painter.
The light
we see,
the light
we don't see.
Our distance
from beauty
a gap
we cannot
leap.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
She summons
her symmetry.
It lays
the stillness
on light
and color,
speaks to line,
to texture,
to the way
her hair
falls just so.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
Not as trees
in wind,
more the sweep
of grasses
the way
she bends,
as if remembering
the girl she was.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
Imagine her
imagining us.
She would be
a poet
in that world.
She would speak
things they do
not know. She
could show them
the way to us,
here, beyond
the loneliness
light suffers.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
The less
she tells
the more
we know
of loss.
Trembling,
the light
cannot
keep its
balance.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
Sister, she might say
if she could
see you, or brother,
father, mother.
There is no
loneliness like
her aloneness,
no silence
like that where
she does not speak.
See how the world
fades to the
color of canvas.
See how canvas
becomes the texture
of her universe,
how the light
becomes pigment
and pigment
was light. Sister,
she might say, see
how I am woman
measured by
silence and light.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
The loneliness
of the hawk
is like unto
that of the woman
in the painting,
which is like unto
the loneliness
of God.
______________________
from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting”
If we asked her
would she say:
I am the daughter
of darkness, of light;
I am a song
that remains unsung;
I am the hope
that someone loves you.
Or would she say:
look at me and weep.
Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination's Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner.