Three Painting by Arthur Dove
I. PLANT FORMS
Dove once pulled up a cyclamen
& tore it up
to show
how the color went
down inthe stem
& on into the root.
Color is a condition of the plant —
color of the flower,
& pod,
embedded in the bud.
At the perimeters of growth
the plant
has lines of force —
as the 'wind
has weight.'
If we could look at an orange flower long enough
it would become blue:
spathe, sheath,
petiole, blade,
stalk, & root —
'these moving circles, in which we walk'.
II. COWS IN PASTURE
What is wanted
is someone who can open the chestnut-burr
with his bare heel,
& bark, hide, the bull-calf eye,
as forms.
Once open, form is wind, 'water in an old hoof-print'.
but most branch an eye,
the bull's or buck-eye,
as if —
it grew bark. Give it hair, turf,
willow.
'Raw sienna, black & green'.
Form has no
size.
The burnt-out log
is not a whale.
Nor is it
'silver burnt brown
wood
color dark'.
And there are no cows.
We walk,
careful not to step on snails.
The grass is very
green.
That the mountainside
looks like a face
is accidental'.
III. MOON
It is, of course, as great as any
Ryder.
The sensation of sound
as if someone
had hit a tree with a club,
fog-horns, the Ferry Boat Wreck—Oyster Bay,
& all his
Dawns, Moons, Suns,
are a new form, 'boundaries of other
events'
such as cross-section
of sequoia,
scales of haddock, agate,
are.
'On the levels of the very large, the very small, the very slow,
the eye sees as constant, & at rest,
what our memory assures us to be fluid & moving'.
The moon is on a tree-trunk
& there are rings of growth & brightness.
At the heart of this
light
it is dark.
This is a man who has looked at a moon in the face, night
& day
dove, dove.
A New Edition (with a Ralph Eugene Meatyard cover photograph)
— many of us own the original Norton copy —
Ronald Johnson
VALLEY OF THE MANY-COLORED GRASSES
The Song Cave, 2023
