by Pamela Miller Ness and Michael Dylan Welch

 

Second prize winner in the 2004 Haiku Poets of Northern California rengay contest. First published in Mariposa #12, Spring–Summer 2005, page 24. Written by email from November 2003 to March 2004. Each verse is based on a painting in the National Academy of Design in New York City. See this ekphrastic rengay with the paintings displayed.

 

 

overflowing

its cut-glass vase

La Farge’s magnolia                                                         Pamela

 

        Homer’s croquet player

        hides a ball with her skirt                                      Michael

 

strewn across

her studio table

Nell Blaine’s turnips                                                        Pamela

 

the unused pencils . . .

Jacob Lawrence grins

in his self-portrait                                                            Michael

 

        gathering hollyhocks

        Frieseke’s woman in blue                                    Pamela

 

to the porch born . . .

the precise signature

on Blum’s two idlers                                                       Michael