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Sunday, August 29, 2010

Thinking about seeing

Recursive

As in a medieval miniature where space is
tilted and skewed, anchored only by a thread
of ink, a thin rope swelling into snaking patterns
copied from Asiatic silk the color of crushed gems
and beaten gold, the flat screen in front of my hands
tilts and skews, and my thin rope—a thought, that
mayfly of consciousness—flits to pattern again.

The variable pitch and yaw of these buildings
in a Sienese predella panel, the civic landscape
that carries all points of view simultaneously
(the bird’s-eye, the eye-level, the scopic)—I see
myself seeing, wishing for such isometric perspectives
while consumed by my own vanishing points.

5 comments:

Dave said...

Great ending! Good to see you posting some of your own poetry.

marja-leena said...

Oh, fabulous poem!

Dale said...

You catch the strange vertigo of medieval art so well, the daring and the costliness of it!

Lori Witzel said...

Hi folks -- yep, seems I'm vertigo, vertigoing, vertigone!

Dave: Thanks much. I think my marinating in ekphrastic language as I work through art history classes is causing some poetry irruptions. Wish I had the four hours of lovely drive time to wander with a camera on weekends, but between work-work and schoolwork no dice. Have been grateful that poems are bubbling up.

Marja-Leena: ::blushes thanks::

Dale: Yes, medieval art's a real eyeful, a bijoux-spangled accordion of space-time for the edifice-complex-needs of church and noble. (whew!) In short: I like it, thank goodness I get to study it.

am said...

Wow!! Your poems!!

Thanks so much for the link to the medieval art, too. Love your links.