Poetry Mark Tredinnick
The Artist & His Model
After Henri Matisse
Each thing on earth shapes the only
Question it knows how to shape—
The question only it knows how to ask,
And only you. Each earthly thing poses its self:
The heron, a patient bolt of lightning running slant
Above the river flats, for instance; the breaking
Wave and the tern that drops, a bow become
An arrow, hard into the backwash;
The sheoaks eschewing all ceremony and colour
In an onshore breeze, and the contingent
Geology of the dunes they keep faith with; closer to home,
The windflower I picked this morning, walking,
And later held in my left hand and drew with my right,
A chaste little odalisque, in the room, while you slept;
The curtains parted now by a yellow afternoon
Wind; the goldfish swimming, in their bowl,
A lyric recollection of your hands, which you held
So close to them earlier, a school of fingers
Teaching your fast mind to slow; the chair
That waits for you in its striped pyjamas;
And, ah, now the chair with you in it again.
And if I pull my stool close to you, it’s not
To crowd, but to gate-crash politely
The querulous ecology of your embodied self.