JOANNE LOWERY

Midwest Metamophoses: Sun

Yes. It is the same.
I recognize its fake stardom
its resemblance to winter’s red ball
its similarity to what baked the Mormons
and makes great plains fruitful—
a smiley face beneficent
drying September’s amber fields
photosynthesizing soybean alchemy
swapping day for night for day.

It is the same sun that woke Ovid
from his sheepskin bed.
He watched it slip west
through Black Sea fingers.
No one told him there was another side
to his ancient world, modern

and radiant, still fueled
by Golden Age dreams.
I have basked in it
and moved around its enormous
bronze rim, I swear shared
my solitary orbit with his
light-years ago, the scene
untarnished by Apollo’s flame.
His noon remains my midnight,
what other Ra can love him?

 

 

 

 

Superfluity

 

Wherever we look, there is too much,
our sated eyes darting like sparrows.
Even a bare room has excessive shading
and motes. On just one canvas
we can spend a lifetime looking at the poplar leaves,
the water lilies, stacks of grain, the Seine’s current
without being able to see the whole,
find every stroke of violet.
Monet was told he omitted too much
from his sketchy world, outlines
and shore, pebble and horizon,
and that brown was as essential as God.
If a sparrow hopped from seed to seed,
the taste shrank to a dab of vermillion.

 

 

 

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