Abstraction​​

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Watery moonrise between mangroves.

All day cogs turn, roaring 

to trap labyrinths of noise. 

Our research is over, calibrated in shadow.

I was young and now I am not that old. 

Because time was always and only time,

space always and only space,

which is true for one and only one woman.

The day affects me. The day’s face begins

to deepen. It sustains its stormy scrim.

I want to gaze instead of speak today.

On my canvas, a girl stretches her legs in sleep

by the shore. Potato sack races 

on grass probably exhausted her; now she stills 

where the silver spoon moon chased her, winded 

in dreams. I sit, motionless, staring for a time.

Beyond my palette, it was blustery, rain

blew out of the valley and wind blew.

She waited with the world, peered 

into the future: nobody there.

Back in the present, all loose ends, 

the hills seem to roll down themselves.

We love disaster when it has nothing to do

with us. We run from the downpour 

into a coincidence of black gravel

compressing our perspective, hurry 

into a ditch before the sky is framed,

all cloud-strewn and brewing growling fists

of tough kids or soldiers sent overseas.

I look up into the unbelieving sky at the voices 

that give me these words, the roads, the cellar,

the parlor that kept our secrets in its brick, the old 

Walkman, static as a television in winter lightning, 

every morsel of our laughter, everything going 

on and on like a tribal song. At the edge of my eyes,

a lone loon braves the polished lawn, 

cocks his head to hear the earthworm

tunnel from dark to darker in dirt mouthfuls.

Tadpoles idle in a little quiet, then 

yellow as stars, on twigs new green grows,

and white as a wall stained violet with sunrise,

hydrangeas burst in frosted sun.

It was a blustery spring and long, but then 

canaries spread in flight

in pools of summer light. 

I can’t explain 

what I have understood.

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By Grace Lynn

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Grace Lynn is an emerging queer painter who lives with a chronic illness. Her work, forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, JAMA, Sky Island, Thimble Lit and other outlets, explores the intersections between faith, the natural world, art and the body. In her spare time, Grace enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, reading suspense novels and exploring absurd angles of art history.