In Winter We Have Sleeves -- Maureen Owen

In the winter
            we have sleeves
but in the summer
            we have arms

I have become friends        with the man
who talks to himself
sometimes   we   wait for a train       or
disembark at the same station        folding               watching
the trees     languid   dense  rolling upward        then backing over themselves

The way Venessa Bell painted portraits of
all
Clive Bell's mistresses      Slow
brushing  the light                Nearby
Virginia Woolf reclines in a deck chair     reading
Story without a Nam
e --- for Max Ernst. c. 1942
four sets of four  full of all size sounds
on the steps
of  Our Lady of Pompei            Church no one asks her to move!      not injured Christian soldier   nor injured Knight in a work shirt back from the Holy Wars  the Crusades      claims  the church  for France    For   local folk  For Little Italy  for the sake of God  for God's sake!
for the hull of the ship was human
the way water & fire  look alike           do they?

past the pewter rims of my glasses

The inlets are beautiful
tonight,               the waters done    in subtle chalks and water paints
neon signs sizzle          in the dusk         By the time I arrived at Duncan Grant's
'Still Life with Eggs 1930'        I realized       I was quite hungry