ideas

[tectak]

''Beyond The Canvas"

After the season unhinged
autumn's calm retreat
from Melina's death,
I returned to this house,
its kitchen warm as sunfish.
Everything appears gray - sleepy gray -
though her portrait still hangs
above our maple lacquered shelf.
I imagine her walking off the canvas
among the iron trees,
where our twinned silhouettes
straddle the stones.
We arrange pranic chants,
till murmurs echo holy.
She asks about Alchemy.
"Did Prince Khalid really squeeze gold
from tongues of titanium, or lead? "
I tell her I'm not sure,
but I would drag Saturn by its rings,
or pull Jupiter below the knees of the Earth
to deliver her near.
A prairie wind strangles Kingston county,
and memory's kinetic spindrift
resurrects her each day.
Tomorrow, I turn seventy two.
As always, the night has sloughed its canopy,
and daybreak's silky entrance awakens me.
But it's all here, the lawn chairs
Melina placed under the moon,
the bone china from Rome
and her side of the couch grown empty -
as yesterday leaves a portrait
taking refuge above
our maple lacquered shelf.

Hello bob,
from my cynical seat I would really like to find something, anything, that I could find wrong with this...not because that is my raison d'etre but because it is so damned perfect throughout that to find a nit would only serve to contrast that perfection.
I cannot identify the scent of genre but I can feel the spirit of the Great American Writers, (Hemmingway, Steinbeck, London, O'Neil) influencing the phraseology, in a good way, and can only congratulate you on maintaining the subtlety of the tincture throughout. I will not deviate from my opening comment...I can find no nits...but critique when offered by one, is sometimes on behalf of others. So, Christopher Sea, I am with you.
Very nice piece and without doubt you will be lauded for it.
Best,
tectak