Claude Monet

Soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise)

My River Runs to Thee

My river runs to thee:

Blue sea, wilt welcome me?

My river waits reply.

Oh sea, look graciously!

I’ll fetch thee brooks

From spotted nooks,—

Say, sea,

Take me!

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Lovers Lament

Claude Monet

La Promenade, la femme a l'ombrelle

Lovers Lament

That summer was the summer of Anne,
As blond as wheat,
Brown-eyed, sweet,
Laughter-filled, eighteen and tan,
A girl to turn the heart of any man.
And turn my heart she did, she did.
It flipped and flopped.
It nearly stopped.
But when I made by smitten bid,
Within my chest I heard it skid.
“Too young, too young,” was her reply.
I shook my head.
My heart played dead.
Ice and sleet invaded July.
Too young for love, too old to cry.
So there I stood – disqualified –
When I was ten and the world too wide.

~ Leonhard Dowty ~

The Summer Day

Claude Monet

femme assise dans le jardin

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver ~

Monet's Waterlilies

Claude Monet

Water Lilies

Monet's Waterlilies

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

I come again to see

the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.

~ Robert Hayden ~