Gustav Klimt, Oil on Canvas
A dizzy of red strums the green and yellow meadow
unrolling like a loaded exhale—
the blowsy breath of a mob of flowers.
Trees hung with apricots wait for ladders and baskets,
suggest a sustenance in this painted world
starred by gold-hearted daisies flung open at canvas edge.
Someone pruned the spherical trees
and mowed the carpet beneath the slender trunks.
Someone will come for the glowing apricots.
In the far distance, rising from the spattered field,
three tall trees cross a ribbed, skim-milk sky,
the middle tree, severely bitten—
Christ and the robbers.
Christ and the robbers.
What human landscape is possible without fruit and robbers?
Mary Buchinger is the author of three poetry collections: e i n f ü h l u n g / in feeling (Main Street Rag, 2018), Aerialist (Gold Wake, 2015, shortlisted for the May Swenson Poetry Award, the OSU Press/The Journal Wheeler Prize for Poetry, and the Perugia Press Prize), and Roomful of Sparrows (Finishing Line, 2008). Her poems have appeared in DIAGRAM, Gargoyle, AGNI, Salamander, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She received both the Daniel Varoujan and the Firman Houghton Awards from the New England Poetry Club and was an invited poet at the Library of Congress. She is currently president of the New England Poetry Club and professor of English and Communication Studies at MCPHS University in Boston. (updated 10/2018)