This New England

Memory of Mortefontaine (1864)

--- Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

A Given Moment

By CHRISTOPHER FOSS

It was as though nothing unusual was happening.

There, in the typical cadences of a late summer breeze,

giant birches leaned into one another,

lazy marigolds, rhododendrons and a few daisies

sashayed about in a slow dance.

Yet to be there in the middle of all this

choreographed splendor was hardly a non-event.

At this given moment something more pricked the senses -

Not the stray cat lurking about,

Nor the cottontails mating near the garden perimeter.

A yawning absence presented itself as lounge chairs,

arrayed symmetrically, shone in the glow of an ebbing sun.

Errant sheet music caromed down the brick pathway.

A pair of shoes had been shed by their owner,

ever careful to tread lightly, one guessed.

Whoever had been there had only just left,

so it seemed, distracted,

it might be believed, by some wind-song

or bough-gleam issuing from this garden,

but calling us elsewhere.

Christopher Foss is a New York-based poet.

 Tags  Christopher Foss Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

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