[lit-ideas] Re: Monday found POEM IN 0 STANZAS, from e bay

"THE GLEAMERS" BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET
I saw it gleam! It was during a trip organized for a poetry magazine launch. My friend and I walked Paris for weeks.
Fresh from the jet, unpacked and settled, we sought a nearby sight. We walked miles south along the Left Bank on a bright and cloudless day. We soon saw "THE GLEAMERS" in the Musee d'Orsay.
Symptoms started on the walk to the Musee d'Orsay. An hour in and I couldn't stop coughing. We kicked up the museum steps and were glad to enter. Floundering with the floor plan, I began to tend to seem to see most surfaces gleam.
The gleam I now knew was the onset of flu. That coughing man sitting behind me on the dark jet probably.
First floor exhibits -- flanked by alcove galleries, an upright grid of paintings close as military tombstones -- were a very weary parade. By second floor, I walked in a gleaming fever dream of dark golden browns, billowy grays, weathered sandstones, pastel aquatic greens and blues. Spangled
Thus I stumbled to "THE GLEAMERS" BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET. As David's ad cites, the painting's foreground holds three French peasant women who "seem to be planting in the fields."
Whew! Stooping like the right hand woman in the Millet painting: me and my new wobbly flu. Not much to glean except further distortions. Resisted the painting. Didn't care about needy gleaners. Unable to summon imagination of the miserable. Sickness making selfish. Planting in a field. I felt like being planted in a field. Ailing among gleaming riches.
Told my friend I was headed for a bench outside the gallery. Suggested meeting me there when done sketching. Please thank-you bye. I sat way back on the pink marble bench. Musee d'Orsay. Such a great museum. Green against creamy brown wall trim.
A long time on display. Ninety minutes later, my friend woke me. Stretched prone on the bench, I had slept like stone in a stone box. Meanwhile no staff had run to rouse me. No thieves had struck. No hotfootings, gummings, or annointings. No impromptu sign pranks or cruel banners. No paper tails curling. No memory of dreams. No gleaming. Just off in the fields sealed in the background. 

Eric

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: