Friday 31 March 2023

Earthworm Watch Day


 

I hadn't really assessed the damage

despite the squelch, suck and plop underfoot

until you said,"It must have rained."

But right enough, there they were

escaping environmental disaster

the flooding of their ecosystem

seeking out new mates and new territories

blindly sensing their trail

propelling themselves bellow like

risking fatal trod and overhead predator

Eco warriors on the move

enriching our lives.


Copyright Cathy Leonard 2023 All rights reserved

See videos 

 The Humble Earthworm

https://www.earthwormwatch.org/blogs/earthworm-watch-celebrates-world-soil-day

Friday 24 March 2023

Vermeer





 There's a great debate

about whether or not 

she's writing a love letter

Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter, with her Maid


Though there's no jug of wine on the table

no viol bow on the floor

no Cupid, eye trained, elbow strained

shooting arrows from the wall


Just the maid, centre stage, 

apparently on the look out

though not looking too put out


And, to the side,the capped lady of the house

tilting her quill- 

red seal, stick of wax 

and crumpled sheaves of paper

on the checkered tiled floor


And there's the maid's folded arms

drawing the eye towards, rather than away from,

her swollen belly

or is it a whale-boned stomacher

so popular at the time?


And there's the Book of Exodus on the panel behind 

Pharaoh's daughter finding Moses in the basket

saving him from certain doom

his real mother in situ

ready to step in as wet nurse


All in all a Dutch domestic interior

gravid with unease

light pouring from a Delft sky

over a canvas awash with  female collusion-


not giving away a damn thing...



Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

https://www.nationalgallery.ie/art-and-artists/highlights-collection/woman-writing-letter-her-maid-johannes-vermeer-1632-1675


http://www.essentialvermeer.com/maps/delft/delft_in_vermeer's_time.html



Friday 10 March 2023

Perchance

 


I have about an hour to write or not write 

a poem about the day I may or may not 

have encountered you at the Chester Beatty Library.


Encountered is perhaps too strong a word.

Brushed shoulders with, held a door for,

 or vice versa,observed a middle aged man,

possibly making notes with a lead pencil 

in a pocket sized notebook-spiral or hardback

perhaps even moleskine with magnetic close and pen loop

and maybe a bookmark ribbon or two,

as you stood in that dim lit display of Leonardo's Codex Leicester,

touching screen to turn a page,sepia ink on linen, marvelling like me

at his busy margins, as you put it later,

his twenty-six experiments of placing objects in water,

or his sketches of bridges and bubbles and the fall of a drop of water.


You wouldn't have noticed me

for I was on a mission for facts, facts, facts.

But you, poised over the Codex, your head a whirlpool of possibility,

a poet in full flung fantasy, imagining Leonardo-

"his marvellous head resting in his hands,

wondering if water might exist on the moon."*

How could I have missed that?


Quote from Billy Collins poem Dublin in his book Whale Day and other poems

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Whale-Day-Billy-Collins/dp/0399589759

 I wrote an article for Ireland's Own on Codex Leicester-  August ,2007, Vol 5,093




Tuesday 7 March 2023

When it Rains



The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


So says the inscription 

under a canvas titled:

 When it rains-

a rainbow spectrum calendar  image

to represent November,

horizontal sheets of aquamarine

falling on resplendence,

martini- cocktail-like umbrellas 

floating on a shifting pool 

of fluorescence.

And despite the impressionistic style

of the whole composition

there's nothing untidy 

in this choreographed display 

of exuberance 

where I expect to see

 Gene Kelly

any minute now

dashin' and splashin' 

and singin' in the rain.


Longfellow would have loved it.


Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Longfellow's Paul revere's Ride

Gene Kelly Singin' in the Rain