Ceci N’est Pas un Paysage by Charles Wyatt

The bridge(,) the avenue(,) trees like staves

Here we are notes or blackbirds

Today I looked at the clock

Today the blue vase leaned toward

the yellow pencil

apple or potato

there on the table near the window

behind the wall behind the blue vase

lies the landscape

the mysterious forest 

the French horn hat

perhaps the obsequious villanelle

in my notes today I found

walking on ice or brushstrokes of ice

and I did find this morning

spilled ice cubes, perhaps a clue

looking down at the earth

no potatoes, only jumbled cubes

huddled together

perhaps in a poem

The great pine stands over my accordion hat

And I woke (today) to the strains of a polka

Dennis Doody’s polka

I still remember the blue vase

While I laugh

Dennis Doody

A fine man who must have smoked a pipe

Or perhaps a polka

The great pine does not have roots like a carrot

and it makes the blue sky white

as Dennis Doody’s pipe

Le Château de Médan

must rest on the road to the enchanted forest

where ferns

brush the brush that fan them

My pockets are both vertical and horizontal

Today I lost my sleeves

thinking myself once again a child

so many apples in bowls on plates

surrounded by folds of cloth

but not still

they tumble, they creep

as will some sentences

the distant sentence rests atop the earth

under the blue sky

(darker than the blue vase)

In the mysterious forest

the commas are hiding(,) 

so many of them shivering

the color of eye sockets

let us say then pause when you like

pause and breath in

little black note above the staves

keeping time

not giving it away

let it be blue

give the shadows edges

let them end 

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Charles Wyatt is the author of two collections of short fiction, a novella, and two poetry collections.  (A third short fiction collection is forthcoming.)  He lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he was principal flutist of the Nashville Symphony for 25 years.  www.charleswyatt.com