My Father and I at the Rock Gardens at the Morikami Japanese Museum, Delray Florida
My father loved rocks, stones. He loved the stories they held
silently inside their scabbed or smooth skins.
When I was little, I knelt at the threshold of his workroom
in the basement watched him sketch in yellowed light
watched him press the lead edge of a pencil
against a canvas drawing rocks stones
pebbles scattered across a barren plain a chiascuro
desert an abandoned world strewn of hope.
I wondered why he sketched in silence
why he was drawn to such an arid world.
Then I visited the Japanese rock gardens with him
boulders lichen-encrusted mottled by rain and wind.
Golem trespassing from a nether world.
What did he see in their frozen poses?
What did he see in the perfectly raked lined
fields in front of the stones, like furrows ready for seeds?
Did he wonder about want desire or grief?
Did he see these stones bearing the burdens of wounding?
Memory takes me as I contemplate this world. Are there
possible words for war violence the detritus of the ages?
Perhaps my poet father gave them up? Perhaps staring at stones was enough.
All that they held inside. I press one dark stone he collected
against my cheek smooth round cool with a trace of a vanishing cloud.
Bonnard’s Paintings: Root in Memory
(In memory of Carley Rees Bogarad (1936-1995)
A woman’s fingers
grasp a brown white jug
indigo and crimson anemones
burst into flame
at the edge of the frame
In another a woman rests
her elbows against a white
and red checkered tablecloth
the rose hue of her flesh
matches a spot on the window
I remember Carley’s full forearms
the tilt of her head
her thick embrace
her slightly smeared flamingo pink lipstick
the royal blue of her silk shirt the day
before she drowned in sleep
In one more a young
naked woman bends forward
her skin slightly flushed
after a bath blue light streaming
across the canvas hyacinth
lavender hues suffusing the scene
I no longer hear Carley’s laughter
or conjure her heavy torso
her lavender sweatered bosom
heaving for breath
Then a stream of images
a sea foam white pitcher
the slight curve of a light
jade green grapes a single yellow pear
the startling pearl gray
of a teapot A room flooded
by yellow and orange almost florescent light
No longer do I remember
the tenor of her voice her words
no longer echo in my dream
Bonnard’s world takes over
flesh never wrinkles
bodies never turn to dust
fingers never press against the pulse of time
Jan Zlotnik Schmidt’s work has been published in many journals including Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Vassar Review, and Westchester Review. Her poetry volumes include We Speak in Tongues, She Had This Memory (Edwin Mellen Press), and Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Press Prize. Most recently, her volume about Joseph Cornell, his life and work, Joseph Cornell: The Man Who Loved Sparrows, co-authored with Tana Miller, was published by Kelsay Press.