Aught, no. 15 (2006)


Marthe Reed

Isola Pescatori, I

Motion refuses capture, a periodic disturbance. Hull length presupposes crest speed where granite waits water, another pressure. Sussuration at the edge of consciousness boundaries its own fluidity. She sits encapsulated by sound. A boat cuts through the lago, its blue and brown body writing green into white. Mountains insist horizon. She retreats outside, leaving behind an undefined stillness above water. Like air, body which has fullness and not a line. A description in prose. Such fluidity disguises the situation. Sound glittering and bluegreen.

 

Isola Pescatori, II

Hydrology asserts a vessel contour of sound, black crowned tern knifing sun-warmed air. 10 a.m. A wave performs a wake. We are not without questions. Green persimmons nestle in leafy shade. Wren and sparrow chorus. No matter, a body which is bodiless, architects the moment. Shapes a space into which “we” appear. Terracotta roofs, pink and red geraniums, jasmine. A single bell tolls the half-hour. San Vittore. A space which is sound. Another boat recedes away, clamor falling into water. To construe pink from gray granite requires a ritual gravity, the precise placement of chairs before water and light. Bodiless also. We accept shade, light and shadow performing their own wake upon the air, and the hard convex surfaces of persimmons.

 

Isola Pescatori, III

Architecture asserts a window defined by the presence of camellias and a grey and orange cat. Sparrow hunting is a dicey business. What vanishes at the edge of sight, sites this. A distant palazzo, a crumbling church, a forest of larch. Butter dissolves on the tongue, abandoning bread. Uno cioccolato, per favori. Artemis acknowledges the light as her own, without comment, as mist slips silently into the water, masking both distance and sound. Only a red kayak. A red kayak heads to the smallest of the islands. A noise of hens or swans, cygnets obedient to the frame posed by jasmine and camellia. The lago invites me. “I” would like to swim. She takes ham from my fingers, delicately licking them. No one is awake.

 

Crag at Les Ayes

“tracking the last aria, like a duration of water
which is a piece of white silk”
--Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

Tracking a duration of orange and black butterflies drawn to blue, anemone divide grey from orange lichen. Magnesium carbonate dusts his fingers. Horizontally. Limestone, creviced and cracked, young larch spill pale and coned over the dome. “On belay”. Hovering, translucent black wings drive pulses of air over her skin. “Ascendeur” (Climbing) a vertical flake, snow melt mutters past asters and blue campanule. “By your knee”, a sudden orange of grasshopper wings over an arête. Carabineers clink on wet air, tracking a duration of creamy black spot butterflies. “Tension.” A duration. Apollon tensions this, cool white silk, which is cloud (air). A sloper and a meadow aria, spires of mauve flowers bright against hayfields. Wild rose and wild raspberries (sweet) mountain blueberries (wild) and ledges, “climb on”. Adoration against a backdrop of larch hillsides, of water driven by gravity, cloud and cascade endure. Rosed succulents cluster concentric against rock “Slack” send skyward pink stalk and pink bud. Crimps blue cloud and white sky. Below, peches blancs et pain aux noix. “Climbing”


Copyright © 2006, by the author. All rights reserved.
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