I lie under impossible sun,
peer under the misty brim of
patterned straw,
trying to see:
the choked dark arteries of
translucent rhubarb leaves
stop at the top stroke of hot
noon, waiting;
blackcurrants hang, sinister,
voluptuous
in jungle-bursting skins of ebony;
potato leaves hang limp, shot down
by fire,
unbelievable lime-green hearts
cut through with odd black
shadows;
drugged earth; baked vines;
enduring stones.
The hot flat fingers of a fork
plunge deep in dust,
thirsting after coolness,
discovering despair;
twisted carrots, gone to seed,
hunch
like a crowd of voyeuristic
skulls, bleached and still;
onion heads, heavy and round as
painted suns,
hang against blue heat, dizzy,
motionless...
A primitive, intimate, tortured
canvas -
Rousseau, maybe, or Van Gogh;
somehow seen before.
Troubled by that someone else’s
vision, that déja vu,
I lie under impossible sun,
peer under the brim of patterned
straw
trying to see my own truth.
(July,
1990)
