Jane Shlensky introduces the Starkweather painting that inspired her poem at the December 12, 2015 Art of Poetry event. This is the final week to enter works to be considered for the March 19 program at Hickory Museum of Art. Please submit by midnight, Saturday, March 5. Photo courtesy of Roger and Ginny Sanford.

Jane Shlensky
INTERPLAY
after “An Artist’s Room in the Country , Cape St. Mary” by William E.B. Starkweather

It takes a while to see the dance
of sun and shade, how light and dark’s
romance retells a tale that’s old
as time, how hues that dazzle—
blues and yellows, greens and cotton whites—
intertwine, move and part,
dip and dim to slate and gray,
muddied gold and brown
when clouds and dusk filter flecks of light.

It takes a certain eye to see nuance
in such a dance, to paint the spirit
of movement and change, to tack
the pieces to the wall, still wet with paint,
to look and look again,
until the rendering is truer
than the view outside,
until the tale told by the artist
is as tactile as a table,
as familiar as a flowered curtain.