Cut-Outs
Driven by the rain
From sickly waving
On a tree to brutal
Hospice on the lane,
Mottled leaves outlive
Their deathly frolic
On the stalk to end
Embedded in the walk
Of fame, where, downed,
They extend their reign,
As fire spurs
A seed to copy underground
What it lost to flame.
These faded pigments
Pass their glory
To cement,
Whose scuffling feet remove
The useless stamp,
Bled of nutrients and hue,
Leaving in the damp
The template of its
Wasted shell, the heir
To all its rampant joy,
Its brilliant dance
Of air: if not its
Colored soul, then just
An appliqué, where
The simple outline
Of its life might
Be seen in passing as
A way between
The darkness and the light.
Explanation
How do we pass on the color of our life, the nutrients we’ve wrung by trial and error, to our children?
Walking in Seattle, Cathy noticed the way wet leaves left an imprint, a pentimento, on the sidewalk, so that when the leaf had been scuffed aside by walkers like us, its shadow remained. The sidewalk was filled with these outlines of missing leaves. On one hand, the glory of the fall reduced to stains on cement. On the other hand, a kind of walk of fame, where celebrity hands are indented in the sidewalk.
As we age, we wonder what will remain of our hopes, our art, when we are gone, or at least I do. Having just seen the Matisse show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York of his cut-outs, which he painted on the walls of his hotel room with a stick in the last year of his life, I saw these last bursts of life as metaphors, as wormholes between the past and the future, between the vibrant colors of a great artist and his future audience, who fill in his simple shapes with the story of his life.
I was also thinking of the way certain trees with serotinous cones open their seed pods only in the destructive heat of forest fires, so that they renew themselves out of the very forces which might seem to put an end to them. So the Seattle leaf shadows gain a certain longevity in their dying, even in such a seemingly inhospitable environment as a sidewalk.
From the ground the glories of the air are reborn, as seeds become leaves, as poets hope that such simple outlines as poems provide inspire curious passersby.
December 27th, 2014, Tippet Alley