journal for new poetry
Timothy Donnelly
Pink Lotus
It’s safe to say that a great painter of seascapes also has to be
a great painter of the sky, as demonstrated by Lane’s canvases
depicting Gloucester Harbor, of which there are many, but one
in particular makes his aptitude for capturing the evanescence of
the air above water abundantly clear. Here, it’s late afternoon
or early evening, tide low, weedy stones along the shore
just visible through the surface, two fishermen with their backs
turned to the viewer, one in blue with a fishing pole and the other
lumbering in red, possibly hauling a barrel off, or onto, the rowboat
hurled up onto, or among, the docks. Exactly when or where or what
everything is and what it’s doing isn’t as definitive as the overall
impression, which is of a precariously pale pink hovering over all
the abovementioned, and more: six discernible ships in the harbor,
others on the horizon, Eastern Point a sliver in the distance
and in the center of it all, but to the left, the tiny Ten Pound Island
with the lighthouse keeper’s dwelling anchored to it like a barnacle
as the light rose haze feathers into an analogous shade of blue
the way the mind does when a hardship loosens, or in the pause
after long exertion, the heaviness of everything subsiding even slightly
briefly exciting the pieces of oneself into a single joyous vapor.