PrintPoem – Untitled (By Rex Begay)
Untitled
In a chow hall
In a prison
Hangs a painting dressing the back wall
Of wilderness facade
A lake to brood upon its frown
Promising freedom with pale-crowned mountains
Creeping land and dismal clouds
Mocking me…feeding hope (one would think)
But I see only imprisonment of a worst kind:
A scene from the mind of a man
Where the snow is warm
The water dry
The dirt clean and
trees can’t wave
There
The snow won’t float down, the rain refuses to quench
The wind denies imploring leaves a whisper and
The sun blinks none to night
Here, nature mourns her laws…
The ascension of the peaks of her mighty mountains
Is to scale the tallest tree in the foreground
As the distance of miles is conquered
By a layer of paint
Diving the waters of her lake
Is to tear the acrylic-encrusted fabric
That is its depths
Its surface splashes only clouds of dust and
Its ripples are but frayed edges
Of woven cloth and long dried colors
Her trees can’t shed themselves of rot
To bring new growth
(The curse of a non-changing season)
An eternity of one second sentenced
To watch my freedom…
From between its bars
Of a wooden frame
Rex Begay