Song to Creation – Land
by Lloyd Rees
I used to own a large print of this painting,
a very good quality print, bought for I think
$70 – back when $70 meant something,
I guess five decades ago. We had it framed
beautifully, in slim white wood with pale blue
barely-there striations (matching, you see,
the work; unobtrusively, not detracting).
I loved seeing it just inside our front door,
looking as if it was catching the light –
the light that was in the painting, shining
not on it but from it. It told me of so many
Tasmanian summers – though it could be
up around Sydney. Anyway, the critics agree
it might be almost anywhere in Australia.
It could never be anywhere but Australia.
It’s the quality of our light. ‘A suffused glow’
reviewers point out, ‘shadeless … evenly lit …
and an open sky.’ As if we here need telling.
It’s the light of joy, the air of the carefree,
the memory of idyllic childhoods where
always we play in water, be it river or beach.
I dare say our kids would see that painting
and think at once of their own childhood
where it hung and shone at the entrance
to home – not only for what it depicts
but the painting itself (I mean print).
But childhood ended, parents parted
and the home was sold long ago.
Where is this now? I no longer know
what became of most of my pictures, the ones
I couldn’t take with me. Some went with him,
a few came with me, others were given
to friends, to op-shops … yet I am thankful
I’ve always held, in my mind’s clear eye,
this painting of home, of rapturous light.
Image: Fair Use. (Found here.)
Prompt 18 for the 2021 April Poem a Day challenge at Poetic Asides is to write an ekphrastic poem, i.e. based on another work of art. It was left up to us to choose our own artwork, so I thought of my favourite Australian painters, of whom Lloyd Rees is one, and when I was hunting for an image to use, I found this, which has so much meaning for me.
Sharing, some weeks later, with Poets and Storytellers United for Writers' Pantry #74.