Painting a picture of the same shrimp boat
Every day of your life might not be so boring.
For a while you could paint only in the mornings,
Each one different, the boat gold in the new sun
On your left, or the boat in pre-dawn fog, condensing
Mist. You might have to wait years, rising early
Over and over, to catch that one winter morning when frost
Becomes a boat. You could attempt to capture
The fragile potential inherent in that event.
You might want to depict the easy half-circle
Movements of the boat’s shadows crossing over themselves
Through the day. You could examine every line
At every moment—the tangle of nets caught
In the orange turning of evening, the drape of the ropes
Over the rising moon.
You could spend considerable time just concentrating
On boat and birds Boat with Birds Perched on Bow,
Boat with Birds Overhead, Shadows of Birds Covering
Hull and Deck, or Boat the Size of a Bird,
Bird in the Heart of the Boat, Boat with Wings,
Boat in Flight. Any endeavor pursued long enough
Assumes a momentum and direction all its own.
Or you might decide to lie down one day behind a clump
Of marsh rosemary on the beach, to see the boat embedded
In leaves. You might picture the boat cut into pieces
By the blades of the saltwort or show how strangely
The stalk of the clotbur can rise higher than the mast.
Boat Caught Like a Flower in the Crotch of the Sand
Verbena.
After picturing the boat among stars, after discovering
The boat as revealed by rain, you might try painting
The boat in the eye of the gull or the boat in the eye
Of the sun or the boat in the eye of a storm
Or the eye trapped in the window of the boat.
You could begin a series of self-portraits—The Boat
In the Eye of the Remorseful Painter, The Boat in the Eye
Of the Blissful Painter, The Boat in the Eye of the Blind
Painter,
The Boat in the Lazy Painter Forgetting his Eye.
Finally one day when the boat’s lines are drawn in
completely,
It will begin to move away, gradually changing its size,
Enlarging the ocean, requiring less sky, and suddenly
it might seem
That you are the one moving. You are the one altering
space,
Gliding easily over rough surfaces toward the mark
Between the ocean and the sky. You might see clearly,
For the first time, the boat inside the painter inside the
boat
Inside the eye watching the painter moving beyond
himself.
You must remember for us the exact color and design
of that.
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