Sunset with frost, Monica’s front window
After the painting by Robert Rhodes
This could be how the world began, heat and frost:
a molten land between the two, where first flesh
quickened and a giant rose in the great gap.
Then the gods brought him down, split his skull
and made the vault of sky from the upper dome.
His body became the earth, his blood the rivers
and the seas. His bones became mountains,
his crushed teeth boulders and stones and pebbles
and sand. One gray eye lit on fire and became the sun;
one stayed milky cold and was the moon.
Wolves chased them across the sky. From his hair
the gods wove trees, whole forests guarded
by ravens and owls. The maggots on his flesh
they made into us, who delve and plow, and build;
struggle and war, conquer and destroy; paint and sing
and make up stories against the coming time when
seas boil and the flaming sword burns everything to ash.
Walking on the Ice in Buchanan Park
After the painting by Robert Rhodes
Rushes and reeds by the frozen lake,
olive shadows rise like bruises
on the ice. So quiet here, cold and still
in February’s dim light. Earth sleeps
beneath our feet. We speak in hushed
voices, afraid to startle this placid winter
scene with brittle sounds. You speak
of your dreams, how your mother
came to you with hollow eyes, held out
a loaf of her bitter dark bread. “Eat this,”
she said, her voice a rustling of dead leaves
in a snowy field , “and remember the names
I brushed hard across your face.”
You woke to a flash of lightning that tore
green tears from your eyes, your mind
flaming to orange and red, the only
dazed and unquiet thing in this ghostly calm.

Robert Rhodes grew up in the Mississippi River
delta region of eastern Arkansas, near Memphis, TN, and now lives in Lancaster, PA. He has painted since he was 12, and for nearly
20 years was a newspaper journalist. He has published three poetry chapbooks and the 2009 nonfiction book Nightwatch: Alone on the Prairie with the
Hutterites. About these recent paintings he says: "Sunset with Frost (2016) is oil on board. Walking on the Ice (2015) is acrylic on paper."
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