Underground Turtles

If not for its dark silhouette,
You would have missed it,
The white on white,
Bone on bone—
The way the scene was lit.

T.S. took a back seat
And so did Whitman.
The miracle of meter
No longer mattered or so it seemed;
It all flowed together

So seamlessly,
O, in such symmetry
And endlessly,
Or so it seemed.

This whole universe stood still,
Stands still,
As in a tableau. Yet
The egret
Flew;

The egret;
Black silhouette;
Death;
Unseen, save by the light of the moon.

And Wyeth,
N.C., came, and comes to mind.
And so did Sassoon.
And I thought of Monet. And Rilke:
Poets, painters, “poet-painters,”
All of the same ilk,

All, breathing from the same turgid tube;
Not pretentious, not dull from storm,
But solemn—
Somewhere where Plath and Keats
Met,
Meet,

Somewhere where the sea and the path forget.
This is no longer dry land.
Flies the egret.

© May 15, 2013 by UT2