The Bathers, and: A Love Sonnet for Impressionists

The Bathers In Cezanne's canvas the bathers are angels, clean and without men, their clothes banked where earthwarm river, sky, and green field blend. They ride like moonlight on the April tide, their whiteness visible even in dark water where like pale monuments they rise from paint. Consecrated by the silence that strands us between God's granary and the taste of hard apples, in life's single dream we think of womenoriginal , delicate, delicious as sin. So I think of you as a boatman would, brimming in arrogant desire and bearing devotion in my arms like an oar, and I would wrap myself in water before you, brief spirit, that your flesh might fill my gentle craft with light. Jerry Bradley New Mexico Tech 81 A Love Sonnet for Impressionists Monet knew he could say it all with clouds, that the parts were connectible just like the pipes of monkeybars or that first bike lying wrench-waiting amid Xmas crowds to speed us to some childhood playground where, fallen together among wetted leaves, we imagine fruited trees standing bare, bursting in our dreams. A grown man too sees his time in a kind of mulberry light; things pair up, no tea kettle sings alone; one might look for firm fruit yet see the sky, that apple-fragrant heaven of Watteau. I recall the first girl I ever kissed squarely and the taste like peaches on her lips. Jerry Bradley New Mexico Tech 82 ...