The sky that edges the picture does not stop at the edge. Eats into. Bursts. Into flames. The way fright can look like sheer joy.
Shrill heat. Whipped clouds. Violence as part of seeing. Certain quartzes contain trapped water. Intensification of extremes. Horizon on fire.
Light accelerates into threat. As if the sky were a distance within us.
If we go deep the image does not resist. There is no return.
Land to scape, image to threat, over to thrown.
Each change remorselessly vows us to no less under the skin.
Compare light and fire, darkroom chemicals and pollution, violence and violence. Suddenly oppressed we take in degrees.
Light and seeing are not in the same space. The recesses of the mind. Conclusions drawn. And quartered.
Focus on the curve of the lense, on watercolor, masking tape, silver salts. Stark daring. As if traveling outside ourselves.
"Light cannot be wrong." But the difference of shadow bespeaks other crossroads.
My words shift the picture. From light to reference.
Constant: Eruption. Heat death. Erosion of surface. Accident of a chemical. One of a kind.
The beauty in what threatens to destroy us.
Rosmarie Waldrop's recent poetry books are Gap Gardening: Selected Poems, Driven to Abstraction, Curves to the Apple (New Directions). University of Alabama Press published her essays, Dissonance (if you are interested); Wesleyan, her memoir, Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès. She translates German and French poetry (Elke Erb, Friederike Mayröcker; Edmond Jabès, Jacques Roubaud) and co-edits Burning Deck books in Providence RI. Rosmarie was a contributor to Volume 1 of Packington Review.
