The Jazz Changes of the Sea

At Crysta's Apartment

An alto saxophone calls/like a sonorous sea bird/somewhere above the ocean/at Santa Monica. The evening waters shine/like darkening red liquor and roll/out satin to the brain's feel,/as I begin to slowly reel/in Crysta's apartment./From her computer,/Southern California harmonies/rise in twilight architectures,/while Rickie Lee Jones moans coolly/over the jazz changes of the sea. We talk and laugh between/intermittent veils of smoke,/as we survey her paintings/ringing the pallid walls./I find my eye stopping/on one of Harvey Goldner in black/like a Munch bohemian/with December in his vision/and ice upon his lips./In the next picture,/he's outlined in skeletal white/suffused in a death blue cloud --/his hat lowered over his sight/watching an invisible light. Northwest overcast seeps/August light through the windows/of her brick building --/casting Flemish shadows.

Alfred Sisley - Along the Seine

In his final year --/withering from throat cancer,/he looks back to the Seine/and the array of boats/its chameleon waters carried/thirty years ago.He recalls how he captured/their radiance/in flat, rectangular strokes/of alternating blue and bottle green/flowing under the bridge/at Villaniueve la Garenne/where vagabond clouds wandered/in an immense azure.On the Argenteuil foot bridge,/people in black and pearl gray/stroll through his memory/over the windy, slate water/beneath lowering clouds/tinged with violet. He sees Bougival in a lost autumn/of fiery poplars that cast/their rust colored images/on the glassy, blue river/and the boatmen who haul/a skiff up the green/banks toward sunset. In those early years, he chased/light and shadow along the river/with the paints and brush/of a solemn, working man.