Ripples

for E. Scott Alighieri

Turner, Joseph Mallord William Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth | Credit: Tate / Tate Images Copyright: © Tate / Tate Images

In rings of bright water
The days of stormy autumn come
Mother, child, brother, son,
Memories, like dust, infest my eyes,
Swirling, like Turner’s skies;
Like water under wind,
Mixing greys and blacks and whites and blues,
A chiaroscuro, tussling these monochromes
Into the piebald skies of heavens above.

Below, girls in mucky summer dresses,
Chase boys with unruly mothers,
Fathers absent, except in dreams,
O! Where do all the shadows go?

Blackberrying down languorous lanes leads only to this
Kiss, O! It’s bliss
To be dancing with winter’s handmaids
Dancing to a frenzy, unfreezing
The ice crystals of the mind,
Stripping bare all that the human heart endures.

Turner, Joseph Mallord William Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth | Credit: Tate / Tate Images Copyright: © Tate / Tate Images