Reading Monet's Garden

Reading Monet’s Garden

It’s not the feathery willows or artichoke
roses or even the purple-green water-lilies
shaped like blood cells under a microscope

that interest me—it’s the boat he made:
a place to see, to paint, to get away from
eight children and not one but two wives

(even if it wasn’t legal until Camille died
from child-birth complications, having been
tenderly cared for by Alice—the other wife.)

Perhaps it’s morning before the kids wake
or afternoon when Camille and Alice argue
over what to order: more poultry or fish.

Monet has already walked the garden twice.  
Unsteady in his boat, he steps lightly toward
the bow, removes a satchel of peaches,

considers the blackness of leather boots
on brown wood and, in turn, deficiencies
in his handling of darker colors. In plein air

the golden eyes of irises follow him
as he passes slowly. The imperceptible
sway of water-wake blurs the points

of grasses and ferns. The granite-walled pond
makes duplicates of bamboo and weeping-
willows. To be surrounded by a mirror-garden,

to move through it, is to feel the vibration
of every bird landing on a limb or parting
pliant leaves. A frog makes widening

tree rings on the surface of the water. All
afternoon and the board he’s sitting on
becomes harder, but his seeing softens. 

Beyond the geometry of a Japanese bridge,
two bodies reach for each other, touch,
and fade into loose patches of dark turquoise.

I see something of what he saw: the impossibility
of division, of separating red shawl and woman,
of choosing one garden view over another.

~ Published in Indiana Review