• Katharine Coles

 

Seduction

 

No-one looks at my arms any more

And says roll up those sleeves, I must

Use my tongue to follow one thing

To another and would you show me your

 

What-have-you.  This is good however

Long it’s been because maybe I was

Once too willing to say, whatever,

Sure, if you think so. Which between us

 

Generated mostly boredom &c

And so has almost never been the best

Answer, though it’s also brought I confess

A few (not enough, in balance) interesting

 

If not always entirely satisfying

Moments in the short run.

 

 

 

Toward Winter

 

Stop solving.  The perfect

Lives somewhere else.  Here

 

Fall eats its way across the foothills,

Not cold yet, burning

 

The way the world tells me

Time is coming, red and cold

 

And fierce.  On the other side,

The opposite.  Shadows shrinking

 

And a sky so beautiful

I can’t look it in the eye.

 

 

 

History of Painting, Part X

 

He’s about to become

All about light.  Limning

And glittering in its way.  Not

 

The subject, the self,

Bearded in its dignity,

But the sun setting

 

The trees on fire behind him

So, like us, he’s lost in woods

He envisions.  Are they

 

Inside him?  Paint

Itself reflecting.  What

Do we choose to see?

 

Put down shadow,

Dapple, the world we keep

Thinking we can know.