Kristin Prevallet
Asteroid
I.
It started like this:
The black bough and the white moon;
a contrast that made each stand out a little brighter.
The sun drops somewhere in this picture, but it’s not a part of the narrative.
All this nature, she thought.
Surrounded by animals, cloaked by the landscape.
An owl sits on a branch long void of summer.
A mound of a world
(roaming through space)
upon which grows a singular tree
These intersect, he said.
But the void within her is total, like the universe.
II.
The wallpaper is the inverse of the wall.
(Meaning that when she drew an outline of “tree,” each leaf was alive.)
He told her a tale that only made sense in a perfectly ordered universe.
Except that in this painting, the spiked tentacles of the plant on her windowsill
crawl to start another dimension:
(fix your glance on the melting
that is actually an emergence.)
III.
Is that any way to end a poem, he asked?
Is that any way to become a creature, she replied?
Do you have anything in common with the squirrel, he asked?
Are you alive in your own world but hidden from mine, she replied?
A tree teetering off the side of a cliff
or,
a flower just beyond the frame:
are you somewhere else, he asked?
IV.
The flame (in another painting)
is actually a reference to the leaf
(oak, fern, sunflower, acorn).
It’s the white space that made him stop and wonder:
do things other than green aspire skywards?
If only he had told her sooner:
she might have been able to move
the language that lay between them.
V.
Her dream last night:
a centipede’s legs are a root system
supporting the world as we know it
(perfect symmetry, the balance of creation.)
Outside the rain is pouring down.
The foliage knows only its own universe (none other). And this
(she had a mind to explain)
is the only peace you can be sure of. |
