Keepers of the Evergreens

Painting by Rick Mobbs


Keepers of the Evergreens


The keepers of the evergrees

doyen, duyan, dogun, dees,

pitched a frighted battlefrees

and smacktossed Lesley.

Ser she bauble, ser she fried,

Ser she mackentoshed

(she lied.)

Ser she mint un Wilber frowed her

Eft er ober issen olster.

(Smashed begonias, il ber datsun issen tolder!)

MAKEN, MAKEN, MEKAN… SMOLDER!

SMOLDER FRIKON, SMOLDER DAKEN, SMOLDER BOSH

AN SMOLDER FREKON!

Is ma el tom dick and Jason

bitte ta doty, MAKK do trisson.

BOSH?

Si. Bosh ed dism tody. Mary frankensense… smell ‘em!

Smell ‘em. Mary, smell ‘em!

(Translation through line 14)

The keepers of the evergreens,
old women, frightful, hair in patches,
half undressed, in tattered slinkies
(pale blue, mauve, olive green and violet)
bound to softest, whitest, oldest flesh
with ties of braided nylon.

The sharpest of them, breasts crossed
and pressed by blue acrylic, arms akimbo,
hands on hips had spent the morning
sweeping from beneath the trees
the fragments of the moon
that overnight had lodged there.
Painstaking work when every shadow
tries to hide a bit of her.

Who could blame the last that tried
for giving up?
It had seen the others crucified,
lashed and torn from root-sides,
hollows. All the grateful places
that the sun provides were brushed
and scourged,
her strokes were sandstorms, locusts,
desert frosts.
The last remains of cried-out moon
drops would spring to life again
at first touch of salt water.
But dust must call for rain, first,
then roll the long way oceanward.

Rick Mobbs

Posted over on his site Mine Enemy Grows Older

Rick made some comments about this particular painting, that he had just sold, endeavoring to remember what had been written about it as an image prompt:
"so I dug to see what ekphrasis pieces people might have written about the painting. The painting to me was a constellation of images and I couldn’t remember, really, what might have been written. I hoped I would find something.

This poem came from a nonsense/sound poem I wrote for fun. The “translation” was something I did to squeeze a little more fun from it.

In my mind the poem and the painting fit somehow. Maybe because the painting reminded me of children’s book illustrations I grew up with. Sometimes I’ll look at a painting and wonder, where on earth did that come from? Then I’ll open some old children’s book, one of the Childcraft series from the ‘50’s, say, and see a border illustration around a page and think, hmmm, that’s where they come from.