Guest poet: Isabel Chenot
"Contour Map"
contour map
I go out when the day is leaving —
the sky fades and I go.
And there they are,
obscuring the blue evening —
the three sides of my soul:
the mountains — bare,
low, reticent
and inaccessible.
I move my finger
on their broken spine —
scarred on sky and bent
like highways through an innate land.
There are no words between us:
just my hand
over a broken line —
a gradient
the sky’s relieving.
Reality and knowing,
and a flat of sand.
A freeness.
The line blurs,
but the sand is glowing.
Isabel Chenot has loved poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood books.
a gradient
the sky’s relieving
What a great line. I relate to it as a visual artist as I often ask myself, "what is the shape of that value?"
Which came first - the photo or the poem? Pure poetry. Thank you.