A man decides to row out of a painting
The man in the rowboat in the middle of the lake picks up the oars and rows towards the edge of the frame. He's in a hurry. He tries to make the will of the water his own. When a bird lifts from the canvas and flecks of blue or white paint from the sky scrape his face, it feels like the slightest of rain.
The man doesn’t know why he wants to leave. He just wants to feel the resistance of the water within him as he rows. He tries to ignore the shout and wave from the woman on the shore. But every time he ignores her, within seconds, her pale hands grip the side of his aluminum rowboat, and the beautiful auburn ribbons of her hair float on the water. So, he gently lifts her and lets her sit in silence with him as he continues to row at a clip.
The woman is his dead wife, and they have always had too much silence between them; they are used to being this way. She often said she did all the work, asked all the questions in their marriage. As he lifts one oar then another from the thick, blue-green impasto of the water, he knows he’s doing the real work now, setting his muscled strokes against the fast-fading rays of the sun.
Lisa Alexander Baron is the author of four collections of poetry including While She Poses, poems prompted by visual art. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches advocacy in writing and speech at Philadelphia-area colleges. Another of her gigs is a circulation assistant at a public library.
See more of her work in 12.3