TRIBUTARIES

TRIBUTARIES AND GILDA. Whenever I can I visit the National Galleryof Art in Washington D.C. There, around the time of Gilda Edwards' death in 2000, I saw an exhibit of paintings by artists who used to visit Monet on the river. The Impressionists, a few of Monet's close friends and their families, came there to paint and to visit, and, "kit and kaboodle," they stayed in Monet's house! They liked to paint the river, and they liked to fish on the river. They liked to eat the fish! A grocer's cart passed by each day. There was an actual green studio boat with an oil lamp in it. Sometimes Monet stayed on the boat all night. Sometimes it rained.. . . Somehow, the studio boat at night presented me with the image of a woman artist near death in a hospital.--In my poem the studio boat became a hospital bed, and Monet became the spirit of art which strengthens the woman. The woman is not actually Gilda Edwards, but Gilda's vivid imagination inspired me, and I dedicated the poem to her, and it was published and received an award from Flashpoint magazine.(I can't find the issue!)

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST IN INTENSIVE CARE
for Gilda Edwards, 1955 --2000.

Needles spring from her arms, tubes
meander the esophagus into what's left
of her stomach.
She knows the cool "port" of morphine.
"I'm tripping,"
she whispers. "It's raining
behind this screen.
My steel beds rockin!"

Distanced from bodily pain
she is able to imagine
somewhere else. Monet's bleached-green
studio boat, the sides hooked down.
"A tub," she giggles. A man sits beside
an oil lamp in the boat. She can sense
his being, solid, yet the color of charcoal dust.
Bowed above the thick paper while he tries
to explain in French, "this morning painted . . .
light, water, pure sky.
Now, a chalk study. . . One day
the Zambesi River."

He unwraps dry bread and a mango.
She manages a whiff. Ripe fruit. Brie.
Anaesthesia. The cavity of her stomach
fills with orchids and lilacs. She exhales
knows in her own way the painter will remain
beside her until day break. She hears
a series of bleeps, raindrops
from the monitor. She's unafraid. For years
this has been her strength. Breath.
The focusing . Images.

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The Lure of Giverny is a tone poem of connections. Langston Hughes wrote: "I have known rivers, rivers as ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep with the rivers."
gs.