What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.—Oscar Claude Monet
 —Poem inspired by Study of a Figure Outdoors: Woman with Parasol and View of Vetheuil,  both by Claude Monet


Slender clouds thinly paint the lower hills.
The rolling canvas is brushed in recumbent strokes,
muted oblong earth tones wash the curved fields and gnarly trees
    cast shadows daubed with breakthrough daylight.

I linger, watching that young, lithe, linen-clothed woman,
white parasol lifted gently over her soft shoulder,
    saunter dreamily along the crest.

The blue haze of the Blue Ridge  
reflects gauzy sunbeams as my eyes drift upwards
    to where she might now be standing.

She, and  that colorful silence Monet painted,
in his 1880s Vétheuil, France, stirs my heart awake,
    as does this Georgia countryside.


© by Randy Mazie.
Used with the author's permission.