THOUGHTS ON CÉZANNE

IN HIS OLD AGE

I could take in boarders

breakfast on crusts and water

drag sore knees and a jointed

German easel to the

rutted ridge near an

undistinguished hump

of brooding rock, painted

again and again;

grow my beard wild as abandoned fields

if crazed suits and pronouncements

came with that fierce cool gaze

caressing with infinite tenderness

the golden skin

of a perfectly

ordinary

peach.

Version first published in The Federal Poet, Vol. LXIII No. 2 (Fall 2015); reprinted in The Spirit It Travels: An Anthology of Transcendent Poetry (Cosmographia Books, Summer 2019)