a birthday poem for my son

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

I gaze at you. The glancing sun rays of spring
have muted the neon glow of your cheeks
made your translucent flesh alabaster
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, distant, you have
slipped into reverie, lost to this world, this instant.
Your blond hair ripples a small start in this 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 this landscape, this poem.
I make a picture and save it for you. It is by Renoir.