En plein air

With his bearded crabby face shaded by a wide brimmed soft hat
he totes his easel, his canvas and all his paints, strapped across his shoulders
to a corner of the sun where no one comes.
He needs no other friends than these scarred brushes.
The commerce of men may let him down but the squeeze of pure pigment,
the richness of tactile hues onto a palette never fails to satisfy him.
Wherever he turns his gaze it falls through a frame.
All of nature divides itself down for him and waits in obedient cubes and cylinders.
He begins to paint, working quickly, and in unlikely blues
the trunk of a tree grows on one side of the canvas.
Clouds part as they will, the sun slips and shifts and he drifts
into his canvas. Brushes come and go, fat squidges of viridian,
ochre and burnt umber are worked in together, transformed,
then hatch at bare canvas, measuring the structure of sunlight,
growing in front of him as whispering boughs crowd at his painted sky.

The picture is as old as the day, morning has drawn on.
It is time to locate this house in the centre of the canvas,
hunkered under its roof like a face beneath a hat,
set deep among greens in the colours of garlic fried in butter,
translucent onion, broken bread. The deliciousnss of leaves follows,
endlessly blending, stubbed green against brown, blue against grey.
He works on untroubled, the Provençal sun flowing and clotting
in his loaded bristles. His sky is alive, and where it meets his trees
it and they move through each other, vying for form.

A little mixed orange, a touch of cad red, and it is time for the grass
to scud across the bottom of his canvas in unruly ranks of green.
Still the day whispers, and while the sun goes into decline
he finds some corners that do not satisfy him, touches that call to be made.
But the shadows begin to betray him, and he packs his paints, his little stool,
and grumpily stumps off home. Where has the day gone?
Nowhere: it remains, forever breathing among these strokes,
scented air seeping from the bare patches of canvas, seething with gentle life.