L'exactitude n'est pas la verite.
--Henri Matisse
Caught up in the roof
there are leaves in the skylight
and, in the pool this morning,
clouds. Someone must decide.
There is a border of flowers
and a snarl of wild flowers
among them giving over to weeds
beneath the trees in half-leaf.
The decision, whether to leave
or remove, is moot
when working indelible colors in
retentive media: when
Miles Davis muffed a note
in the 8th measure of his solo
on "Blue in Green",
in 1959, he left it
just the way he played it;
in ninety years' Chi Bai Shi's
hsieh-i of bindweed,
a bamboo stalk wavers
where his hand trembled
over a moment of youthful folly;
and in Wallace Steven's heaven,
just as in New Haven,
no blossoms ever have
kept their bloom. Now,
there is something to decide,
a question to answer about
something important, something
gathering in the half-light.
Kevin Cornwall © All rights reserved.