An austere inside, windows on a tree-
lined street near the Bay of Nice.
I make plans to adapt a painting,
a blue nude not idealized, fluid,

moving. But I’ve made errors before.
What was once the dark leafy
green thing is now the Fiddle fig’s
open palm, stripped light filling

the room, rounding the curves
of a woman sinking in her
chair, harmed by being
called beautiful. Nasturtiums

in a vase. A bowl of oranges.
I have a problem. I look
at everything and want to change it:
a cypress could hide the electric

pole. I can imagine the shrubbery
pulled over the neighbor’s plastic tree
house. I’d love to slide that cloud
to the left one inch. This world
 
of waiting rooms and paperwork
will break your heart, so why not
eat flowers in salads, reach for ribbons
of citrus from the ice at the bottom
 
of a glass? Don’t you want your sky
to be beautiful? I am not Aphrodite,
who rose up from the Med, slick
with brine, foam clinging

at her hips, but I’d weep, too, at the sight
of a slip of palm and all this dying-

aliveness of color that would stay with me
until it’s my turn to sink back into the sea.

—Janine Certo

Poet’s Website

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