Perspectives, Entranced (Ekphrastic)
[Inspired by Peter Davies’ suggestion from a Canaletto painting @The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Canaletto (Giovanni Antoniocana). * Santa Maria Della Salute on the Dorsoduro Sestiere. **‘Boy Holding Frog’ by US sculptor, Charles Ray, removed from Punta Della Dogana 2013 after protests. ***Harry’s Bar/Francesco Da Mosto] First published in Star Tips 2021-06 (Issue 142)
This oil on canvas@, circa 1730,
in landscape, 19.5 x 28.9
is every inch a masterpiece of time,
located in the Museum of Fine Arts
in Houston, Texas, USA.
To see Italian grandeur would be worth the trip,
though Canaletto (1697-1768) is long-gone.
Busy as Hyde Park Corner (and not in lockdown),
gondoliers dressed in traditional clothes.
Like Sacre Cœur (in Paris), a famous dome*
on the downtown shore, inland through quaintest back streets.
Stayed there once, a rumble-wheelie
suitcase back to the station.
A sculpture of a boy holding up a frog,**
winging towards Piazza San Marco and the patronal lion.
Traghetto, all you need to know of transport
-a cheap fare (standing) – wobbling to the shore.
This composition has everything, to bring
luminosity and longing for such blessing:
to take heaven’s steps… to coffee
where the great/the good/ and Francesco have sat,***
on the famous side beneath Rialto Bridge.
The painting’s sky, in shades of gentle grey
-which might be blue, with wispy gathering clouds;
the buildings glowing shades of Venetian light;
the river calmer, like a skater’s pond.
Barrel/drapes/sailing rigging, all
as you would wish to find; to wander round.
Except, it’s free to look at – gaze online –
to dream of Covid-free Italian scenes.
I Wandered Bowderstone to Grasmere via Kendal and Waterhead
The bus to Seatoller disgorges at Bowderstone.
Midges like giants infest ripe air of meat and sweat
and raw sunshine-blue skies.
Dodge-swipe and dance to Keswick,
where Derwentwater aches its easy perfection
of rowing boats/canoes/sailors: like wasps.
From Mother’s Day to Easter in and out of hospital
dodging fate. Grandma.
Holiday curtailed.
Like farmyard-vicious flies on the sileage heap, grown
children perform the necessary: breath relieved sighs.
Barely expressing grateful thanks to professionals;
no hospital, no answer to the phone. Ringing.
Neighbourly goodness finds – too much, too little:
Grandad,
at home; one last day.
Numb shock takes a man up Skiddaw,
cooling the heat of early morning phone calls.
Tremoring anxiety takes a woman by bus, to the farthest
reaches of iconic perfection.
Holiday – soon to be curtailed.
Can relatives/friends regroup?
Shall we tell the lie to non-religious?
67 years of married bliss. Together again.
The hills are framed: a perfect sunshine day.
Such effort; such waste. I could wander beside:
a dove/a cuckoo clock… gravely,
today.
Pressing for a Pulse
In 30 years, who will remember
David?
Will they reminisce over sometime poet,
Mum?
No matter the state of England’s fading glory,
nor what rises in Stars and Stripes,
or the Lotus flower.
There are drones of Wars
and rumours of Wars.
For today, bumbling bees are rolling in
Oriental nectar,
engorging shades of crimson, scarlet, cerise,
while Indian caterpillar turns up flimsy legs
wobbling with blame and Ganges pyres.
Bloated flies press down to steel the pane,
creating news (not History undone).
The Angel of the North is silver (grey),
who bloodies Holodomor in Disbelief?
As for me, I will choose
sunflowers,
poppies
and every year’s daffodils.
Lighter Evenings
There’s something temporal in the poppy,
although its lofty glow of eternal skies
breezes through a field of reds:
warmed breasts of faithful robins evermore.
So to object to the poppy, in all its brevity,
is a no-no, before that vibrancy
heavily proclaiming row on row of crosses, fallen.
Wall in their bounce and breezy lightness of being,
gone too soon. Seeing the flimsiness of life.
Californians rife in formal hedgerows now
and how those Orientals breed and spread.
Vivid shades of petticoats and dresses,
next season’s colours ahead of the border.
Tie ribbon tresses as she prances round,
all-innocent in childhood’s happy games.
Each flower remains dropped or bounced into
stray soil, so next year’s toil, so long forgotten,
spreads Californians or poppy-red,
while Orientals dig their roots in deep
and keep their wicked flouncy brights
next year, in lighter evenings, farther beds.
Why, poppy-brash new star,
do you hate poppies so?
Selection of Short Forms
Tanka
Although loved dearly,
flouncy dress remains outdoors:
it’s cold to sit out.
Shall I compare Hyacinth?
Cheap scent, garish, crumpled fast
Senryu
Lit fountain candle,
memorialising them all;
fizzed and snuffed out fast
Village Sign (Triolet)
There’s a village sign at Catfield
placed on the lovely open green:
striding across, black cat’s their shield.
There’s a village sign at Catfield :
feed or stroke, don’t leave him concealed.
Star of the sign, lucky if seen,
there’s a village sign at Catfield
placed on the lovely open green.
Shuck up, After Dark (Limerick)
Beware of the infamous Black Shuck:
if he breathes down your neck, trust your luck.
The locals won’t tell you,
Fake-en-em’s best gin (true!),
so you might get away with a fkck.
Wendy Webb - Born in the Midlands, home and family life in Norfolk. She edited Star Tips poetry magazine 2001-2021. Published in Indigo Dreams, Quantum Leap, Crystal, Envoi, Seventh Quarry, The Journal, The Frogmore Papers) and online (Littoral Magazine, Autumn Voices, Wildfire Words, Lothlorien, Meek Colin, Atlantean), she was placed First in Writing Magazine’s pantoum poetry competition. She devised new poetry forms (Davidian, Magi, Palindromedary); wrote her father’s biography, ‘Bevin Boy’, and her own autobiography, ‘Whose Name Was Wit in Waterr’ (title inspired by Keats’ grave in Rome). She has attempted many traditional forms and free verse. Favourite poets: Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Burnside, John Betjeman, the Romantic Poets (especially Wordsworth), George Herbert, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Mary Webb, Norman Bissett, William Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Current poetry collection: LOVE’S FLORELOQUENCE, Wendy Ann Webb,
Amazon.co.uk.
Love's Floreloquence: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Meek, CT, Meek, CT, Webb, Wendy Ann: 9798372967595: Books
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