Innocent painters

After Henri Rousseau

 

Innocence was never my forte, baskets

of blue hare and wrestlers, sunsets

careless with tiger, a nude

or a fern baffling faculties

of mirrors: the colours bright

and eyes so far away.

 

Watch stalactites, where only light

is fluent: under the blue gale

seas barely quiver: undetachably

patient peasants breathe in

existence, breathe out

fate as a puffball.

 

Suggesting not just if petal, orchard

and tiger, but when black twigs dance

over and over us,

will fall alike bombs, last kisses, ice,

on such eyes

in unhurtable focus.