15 May 2009 | Vol. 9, No. 1

Life Can't Be Art You Say

by RACHEL DACUS

But if those clouds were Turner's pale blooms

stemming from ocean—if any horizon could tie itself

in evening's lilac knots, my stanzas of self could

sail into the not-everything-a-poem.

If not art, why would our family villanelle

have been just Say it!, all arguments end-stopped

rhymes with ever and fend. Whatever else

explains this morning's layers of birdsong and wind?

A musical threading of our years' arabesques

of absences. You admit relationships

are either art or science, so don't those lean winter trees

somehow alliterate with alien and lenient?

And the air's tang reverberate with the new year's

blossom pink? Our rising mountain years,

the waterfalls of doubt we scurried beneath,

our bare legs and umbrellas like a print by Hokusai.

Love is different than a work of art, I agree,

because the layers are deeper and ever rearranging

their chrysanthemum geometry. Together

we remain an unfinished still-life

constantly breaking into a cantata

of dish clinks and dogs whining—and yet

the pristine breakfast silence

clouds with lyric all our logic.