The Gate of The Philosopher

Inspired by the painting: The Artist Looks at Nature, 1943 by Charles Sheeler

Opens to perennial fields.
Opens to a garden of theories
and water mining its own path.
Opens to a house made only of windows.
A tree is never just a tree
but the language born of its roots.
The sky isn’t merely sky
but the frightening limitlessness of it.
There are yews growing in cement.
There are shadows skewing logic
and perspective. The Philosopher knows
there is no such thing as green.
The gate is open to a plein air man
painting self-portraits
inside black & white walls he invents,
opens to the owl’s midnight call
and the hope that it will be answered.

Joy Gaines-Friedler
Millbrook, F.H. Michigan USA

Donated to InsideOut Literary Arts Project, Detroit, Michigan