for Arshile Gorky
Four bedded down in woods four and us at the window
aware of what’s unaware of us three count a fourth
a shape hidden past the ear of who
we can’t say what their relationship
each to the other we can’t our own or severally
to God inside brush on canvas
his small way of abstractly recalling fields
washing stones of poplar leaf sirs
in orchard wind to color what can’t
its beauty convey crane our necks
to hear it bed ourselves into all
that would seek cold winds Arshile recalling
his earlier names the holy tree
from which hung strips of clothing
a pilgrim’s practice marked genocide-pure
four bedded down sleep-dozing if we let them
if we let it darkness comes
stitched in yellow and a red mouth
Carol Ann Davis is the author of the poetry collections Psalm (Tupelo Press, 2007) and Atlas Hour (Tupelo, 2011) and a forthcoming essay collection, The Nail in the Tree: On Art, Violence, and Parenting (Tupelo, 2019). Her work has been published in The Georgia Review, AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. An NEA fellow and finalist for a National Magazine Award, she is professor of English at Fairfield University, where she is founding director of Poetry in Communities, an initiative that brings writing workshops to communities hit by sudden or systemic violence. She lives in Newtown, Connecticut. (updated 4/2019)