The next Art of Poetry event is almost here! Please join us on Saturday, March 19 at Hickory Museum of Art, beginning at 2 pm in the front lobby. It is free and open to the public.

Nancy Posey introduces the  Starkweather painting that inspired her work at the December 12, 2015 Art of Poetry event at Hickory Museum of Art. A regular contributor, Nancy has moved from the Catawba Valley and will be greatly missed by the AOP family and everyone in the poetry community of our area. Photo courtesy of Roger and Ginny Sanford.

Nancy Posey
VISITATIONS
after “Expert Criticism from a Classic Standpoint” by William E.B. Starkweather

Others pity me
my long, solitary afternoons,
alone in my sun-dappled days,
catching that certain slant of light
sunrise, twilight, the same scene
in all its variations. I hear the jokes—
Monet, they call me. Monet without
his haystacks and his lily pond.

This they do not know:
I come back day after day,
not hoping for a new view,
some epiphany captured
in watercolor on canvas,
but the daily visitations,
this pair, all hooves and horns,
each, like me, with his own desire,
a soul to steal, a virgin
to lay her head in his lap.