Green
and Tangerine on Red
after Mark Rothko
The relief of finding things
is as good as finding
all things
gone. A square of green can be said to be a thing
and a square of red running under green can be
said to run and can be said
to fall and can be said. And all
can be said. A winter night.
Quiet.
Even as the things are said
aloud. In time. Even
as a thing. As things are. As a thing
becomes another thing. And there is quiet
between them. The green of the world
finally in a place. In a square.
A square holding the thing loved
and the thing loved is the loss of things.
A mist. A voice humming.
Magenta,
Black, Green on Orange, 1949
after Mark Rothko
The observer is the shade.
In contrast, the thing seen
can be said to move in the area
like a watercolor, or caterpillar.
Sunlight is reduced to two places
on vertical planes. God is in the bright edges.
The shade would give all its blackness
to breathe and live as green
to have some red and to feed on paper.
This is love with black and green.
We cannot expect the shade to have knowledge
of the caterpillar's pain.
The shade sees the thing and wants its thingness.
Untitled,
1969
after Mark Rothko
Then there will be a time.
As rain. As good.
A window.
Then there will be place
and waiting. There will be
a place. In the goodness that anchors
all the miles. There will be time,
and there will be another,
or many others
in the elevators
of ideas. There will be
a sign.
There may be a time
to see a self. In language.
There may be
a self.
Or there may be a story so large
systems could be nothing,
a cloud or latitude.
A cloud.
The nighttime. There may be.
A palm tree as a tree
could mean a thing.
There could be a thing.
Could be that things and then
We'll be glad. Many things
in the field. Snow and starlight.
Such as snow.
Or fish. Such
as ourselves.
Such as it is.
Bio Note
Caley O'Dwyer's first collection of poems, Full Nova, was published
by Orchises Press in January of 2001. His poems are published or forthcoming
from Hayden's Ferry Review, Santa Barbara Review, Washington Square,
Poet Lore, Many Mountains Moving, The Quarterly, The Texas Review,
Spelunker Flophouse and others. He is a 1998 winner of an Academy
of
American Poets Prize and a 1996 recipient of a Helene Wurlitzer grant
for
Poetry. He currently teaches writing at the University of California,
Irvine.
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