Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsFall 2019  Vol. 18 No. 2
poetryfictionnonfictiongalleryfeaturesbrowse
an online journal of literature and the arts
 print preview
back WILLIAM LOGAN

En Plein Air

Watercolor in grisaille—intemperate,
fugitive tints the eyes invent—
those hours pass in array, a funeral march,

the procession of the happy-to-be-alive.
In retrospect, furrowed spring
and the rough pillars of late summer

stretched across the skin of December,
sheet-snows wandering the trackless past.
Things unsaid too often said.

The street’s old houses took the shock
of their century to the next. How long
before the brick unsaid itself?

That muttering of swifts outstayed
their unwritten lease; the hair-thin glass
one morning cracked the disputed border

of electric current buried in the walls.
The old world lay in house arrest.
The shadow came, left, came again.  


return to top