Green and Tangerine on Red

    after Mark Rothko
       

    The relief of finding things
    is as good as finding
    all things

    gone. A square of green can be said to be a thing
    and a square of red running under green can be
    said to run and can be said

    to fall and can be said. And all
    can be said. A winter night.
    Quiet.

    Even as the things are said
    aloud. In time. Even
    as a thing. As things are. As a thing

    becomes another thing. And there is quiet
    between them. The green of the world
    finally in a place. In a square.

    A square holding the thing loved
    and the thing loved is the loss of things.
    A mist. A voice humming.


    Magenta, Black, Green on Orange, 1949

    after Mark Rothko

    The observer is the shade.
    In contrast, the thing seen
    can be said to move in the area
    like a watercolor, or caterpillar.
    Sunlight is reduced to two places
    on vertical planes. God is in the bright edges.
    The shade would give all its blackness
    to breathe and live as green
    to have some red and to feed on paper.
    This is love with black and green.
    We cannot expect the shade to have knowledge
    of the caterpillar's pain.
    The shade sees the thing and wants its thingness.


    Untitled, 1969

    after Mark Rothko

    Then there will be a time.
    As rain. As good.
    A window.

    Then there will be place
    and waiting. There will be
    a place. In the goodness that anchors

    all the miles. There will be time,
    and there will be another,
    or many others

    in the elevators
    of ideas. There will be
    a sign.

    There may be a time

    to see a self. In language.
    There may be
    a self.

    Or there may be a story so large
    systems could be nothing,
    a cloud or latitude.

    A cloud.
    The nighttime. There may be.
    A palm tree as a tree

    could mean a thing.
    There could be a thing.
    Could be that things and then

    We'll be glad. Many things
    in the field. Snow and starlight.
    Such as snow.

    Or fish. Such
    as ourselves.
    Such as it is.

     


    Bio Note

    Caley O'Dwyer's first collection of poems, Full Nova, was published by Orchises Press in January of 2001. His poems are published or forthcoming from Hayden's Ferry Review, Santa Barbara Review, Washington Square, Poet Lore, Many Mountains Moving, The Quarterly, The Texas Review, Spelunker Flophouse  and others. He is a 1998 winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize and a 1996 recipient of a Helene Wurlitzer grant for Poetry. He currently teaches writing at the University of California, Irvine.


    Contents

    		 



     Caley

    O'Dwyer