Invitation
Will you dance? I fear the chance won’t come again. Cold nights and dry days have loosened our once- youthful grip & put a sunset color in our cheeks. Let’s take a turn, swing to the wingbeats of the rust- voiced grackles. Let’s swirl, break trail for the rain, for everything good. Later we can have a tete-a-tete, escape the stares of those golden-haired debutantes & lie whispering together in a golden bed. We can dream of increase in the sleek crops of nightcrawlers. But first we must part from our parent oaks.
in response to a painting by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Touched Update (10/27): I should explain what I’m up to here. Clive’s painting is his take on the Annunciation, a creative re-imagining of an oft-painted myth. Marly Youmans noted in a comment that she’d never seen an Annunciation in which Gabriel actually touched Mary like this, and the sunflowers and the abundant oak leaves were novel additions as well. Traditionally, the Annunciation is celebrated in March, but the leaves and flowers suggest late summer or autumn. I thought it would be fun to try an intentional misreading of the painting. My first draft had them as a human couple, with Gabriel as an Edward Scissorhands kind of mostrosity, the wings actually deformed limbs from a partially reabsorbed twin. But the more I looked at the painting, the more I focused on the oak leaves. At first they were simply the occasion for the dance, but soon they took over and the figures at the center of the painting became something like leaf spirits.