The Jumping Off Place

Josephine Hopper’s comment on husband Edward’s painting, Rooms by the Sea, 1951
 

Azure waves float two rooms
           a door opens
                      catching the ocean breeze
sunlight streams
           in a part of this suite
                      where under a slice of picture
the red sofa invites
           shadowed in blue-gray
                      the corner of a chest
no balcony   no steps   no sand
           the jumping off place
                      for someone who gazes
from these disembodied rooms
           waiting for the horizon
                      to widen   the sea to deepen
who would want
           to be drifting here
                      only a seeker
of the spare ways
           a man might reveal himself
                      to the world

Diana Pinckney, of Charlotte, NC, has five collections of poetry, including Alchemy, Green Daughters, and The Beast and The Innocent, 2015. Pinckney is the 2010 Winner of the Ekphrasis Prize and Atlanta Review’s 2012 International Prize.

Featured image: Cutting Sunlight by Erich Ferdinand. CC license.