Nothing here testifies to the veracity of this scene—
not the intense blue-white sky, not the mountains
disappearing behind each ridge a shade paler
than the ridge before: virulent green, lilac-green, lilac
tinged ultramarine, a pale cyan decorously receding
in Renaissance inspired sfumato
The cloud hovers,
moving by such infinitesimal degrees
the next time I look up from my scurrying pencil
the hovering cloud has split in two:
two ivory-white puffs of frivolity hover one above the other,
above the radiant white horizon line
What of the sudden dart of bird-wing across this still scene?
What of the chirruping, cuckooing, cackling, quacking
(frogs, not ducks, from the neighbouring duck pond);
the buzz of flies, bees, bumble-bees, beetles
and the myriad other unidentified insects
skittering, flying, flitting, scritching
What of the effects of light and shadow, a gathering dusk?
Could not all these result from a sleight-of-hand,
smoke-and-mirrors, a magician’s touch, a puppeteer’s?
The birds are pulled by strings across my line of sight;
the insects’ buzz, the refinement of the musician’s art;
the effects of light, obviously an illuminator’s gift
The whole effect, a sublime instance of theatrical craft,
all of which I heartily applaud—I would rise up to demand encore!
were I not so happily, merrily, comfortably ensconced here,
reclined, recumbent, altogether far too chilled
to do little more than marvel and enjoy the nothing that moves
and the everything that changes
