(a love poem to my son)

i
Jarret is in a Miro
Because I say so.
If I had a camera with me
I could prove it.
There are lines, and squiggles
around him and he looks
like a little squiggle himself.
My thoughts frame
in coherence with Miro—
Jarret has fallen into a plane,
another mark amongst the twists—
there is a question whether this is a picture
of something or just a
collection of surreal shapes; it
looks like a face that might be
a place.
Jarret is standing past/above/beyond
the nose.
A pithy branch unravelling
is the colour of eyebrows
etched in sand. There is a red
croquet ball to the right appearing
at the same height as Jarret’s head
now just another eyeball
according to my eye.
I paint in a mouth because there
isn’t one there.
I don’t have a camera.
I take a picture and say,
“looks like a painting by Miro.”

ii
I gaze at you. The glancing sun rays of spring
have muted the neon glow of your cheeks
and made your translucent flesh alabaster
and rose. I wish I had a camera.
You are lost in a field of vibrant green—
green shoots in the trees, green leaves like rain.
Only apple blossoms and clouds in the sky
paint a counterpoint to the riot of green.
And you.
Your eyes are grey, windy and distant, you have
slipped into reverie, lost to this world, this instant.
Your blond hair ripples a small start in the field
that is enormous and intimate. Everything frames you.
As surely as the skies turn, sun burns, you have
strayed into a painting by Renoir. If I could take a picture
I would show you some day when you question
bacchanales and pastorales, elegies, odes and sonnets,
I would show you how the light shone this day
from within you, illuminating the landscape/manuscript;
I make a picture and save it for you. It is by Renoir.

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