Landscape with Jar
(after Wallace Stevens)
What vanishes more readily than the breakable
and transparent? Not here, not now, it says,
never voluble in the morning. I have work.
The horizon exists simply in perception.
Try to touch it – the hill meets the sky
only from afar, offering discordance
up close, no measurement possible.
And among the trees and vines, a glimmer
of spite, twisted open. Moving closer, we see
through. We see rocks, a bird. We see air.
“Landscape with Jar” was first published in Birch Gang Review in July 2017.
I love writing that makes you stop and think. Brilliant!
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You are very generous Paula. Thank you. I’m still pondering that jar in Tennessee…
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I love the image the hill meeting the sky. Near us, we can look out towards France where the sky meets the sea and it makes me realise that we are nothing and everything.
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Ah, yes. We are, as Stevens said, the nothing that is. 🙂
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