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, Summer 2019)