Milestone in Monologues

For Shirley:

The Horizontal Reading

Long shadow of a late afternoon
yawns before her
like the mystery in an alley
on a DeChirico canvas
The dark line on the blue horizon
reading from classical left to Biblical right
and back again
shifts along the straight and narrow path
as fleeting light mingles with the stars
of the milky way on her spotted dress

Yellow sun of a brilliant day
opens its eyes before her
like the spotlights on a stage
that follows spinning young dancers
Ascending light draws a reader up a page
from Mesopotamia below to the Orient above
and back again
as flower buds reach
behind the pages of a book
for tessellated words in stone

Back in November of 2007, I wrote a blog about a book of poetry that I was working on. I then wrote a post some time later when the book was about one fourth of the way finished. My book, Monologues: One Hundred poems for one Hundred Paintings, is now halfway completed. In celebration of making it to this milestone I am publishing one of the poems from Monologues and the companion painting.
I anticipate the second half of this book proceeding more slowly because I have identified twelve paintings that I either need to paint over again or substitute with new ones. When I finish six of these and have written seventy-five poems, I’ll mark that milestone by publishing another excerpt. I’m predicting this to come about at some point in mid to late summer.