Water Colour

To have seen them

time crumbling from stone walls

to have seen them

in quiet conversation at water's edge

to have seen her in a painting

brushstrokes gold in black hollows

river bending between banks of thatch

dream sedge

            gold in black hollows

her words around his shoulders

his smile beginning with her eyes

               2 

a Hereford bull

head to head with a white cow

her newly dropped offspring

tottering to the udders

medieval ruins of family life

gone ragged in the wind

a water bucket slops on straw

boots on a stone floor

echo forced marches

now doubles the image of flaxen horse

while between the painter and his model

lies a heap of shivering glass

                 3

Through copper glass are dusk and dawn

portrayed & on a truckle bed wives laid

he mouths & blankets bare to flesh

interior gaze   gray shadowed cave

stone cottage impaled by sky

of all that is

only words have no matter

except this illusion that words exist

she mouths like this

while white gray cloud   or pink and black

or blank pigment of the screen

becomes our skin

                 4

to have seen them

limping like dogs on the beach...

light made a faint impress on her cheek

watching each moment

he was poised on this one rock

water foaming past his heels

watching each moment stream

water down from the hill

emotion like water from pebbles trickling

brushstrokes of song smeared by wind

shouts lost in sound spoke into horizons

© Dick Russell, 2012

Early versions of Parts 2 and 3 published in Chapman Dick Russell issue
Edinburgh 1975