Poetry Friday round-up is with Catherine at Reading to the Core.
The summer is made so much brighter by the exchange of poems arranged by Tabatha Yeatts. Mailboxes share a bit of insight (along with the proverbial wasp or two). I have been pleased to receive two poems so far. The first sent from our friend Ruth Hersey. Ruth sent a postcard of a Georges Seurat painting, one we are all likely familiar with. She also sent this photo that she took of observers of the same painting. Her poem comes from the wisdom of watching these observers.
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
“Some say they see poetry in my paintings; I see only science.” Georges SeuratOn a summer Sunday afternoon in 2018
We look at a painting of a summer Sunday afternoon in 1884.All those people with exquisite posture
Whom Georges Seurat saw by the Seine
Have been gone for years,
Bustles and parasols packed away,
The monkey’s chittering long silenced.And all these slightly scruffier people
Looking at his painting by the Chicago River
Will be gone one day too,
Their baseball hats empty
And their phone screens blank.The sun through the skylight
Illuminates the Parisians and the Chicagoans,
Shines on those millions of dots of paint that will outlast us all.Ruth Hersey, (c) 2018
My second poem exchange came this week. It slithered like a snake between bills and advertisements to delight me. Rebecca Herzog wrote a concrete poem (these are so hard to do well) about the Bayou Teche. I am touched that she took time to research the legend of the Bayou Teche. Her research comes together in this fabulous snake.
Poem by Rebecca Herzog (c) 2018
Thanks to Ruth and Rebecca for taking the sting out of getting the mail!
Reflections on the Teche 