“The Painter’s Wife” a poem by Alyssa McPherson ’13

Nor'easter by Winslow Homer

Nor’easter by Winslow Homer

The following poem by Alyssa McPherson ’13 won the NJCTE Gold Medal in poetry. Aly received a 2013 Governor’s Award in Arts Education and performed her poetry at the Patriot’s Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton in 2013 and at the Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark in 2014. She currently attends Brown University where she is studying Literary Arts. The poem is dedicated to Winslow Homer’s wife.

 

The Painter’s Wife

The gale came at his call and he
ran, clambering over rocks and
clinging childlike to scarred crevices,
mounting the cliff and
opening his arms to the
wind.

He wished to suck the surging
waves and moaning air into
pale canvasflesh. The
gale came at his call and he
opened his mouth to swallow
its rage.

He ripped savage gray and
misted melancholic blue
and hurled it across his walls.
The house watched warily the
creeping tide. It knew the dangers
of this love.

He sat hunched in dirty
moonlight, dabbed feathered
finger into pools of melted
color. Wind rattled speckled
glass and he stroked its cries
into ragged imagery.

Nightfall and he staggers
in, painted adulterous
grayandblue. The house
says nothing, but sighs and
opens its arms to him,
never begrudging him
his tumultuous mistress.

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