Chas. Codman, Minor Landscape Painter
After an exhibit in Portland, Maine, of a 19th century Portland-based artist, Charles Codman

1.

The lack of glazes that might have deepened
lake scenes or the pearly tinges of his clouds
more suitable to South Seas than New England,
like whorls in the ear of a woman in Fragonard
her skin nothing but pink, alabaster, and butter.
The brace of women, one twirling a parasol—
repeat in paintings for estates and public places—
then tiny sloops confront identical directions
whether painted on canvas or on wood.

2.

The boulders transparent as clouds behind them
Figures who camp on river islands tiny as ones
in microscopes or dioramas, who beckon or stretch
beneath white tarps that are leaden hair-fine strokes.
Game smoking beneath torrential background.
A few feathers in the hair, not strokes enough
to designate nation or clan. As bricks dissolve
in mud, so mountainsides dissolve in pearly skies
that are mental refuges, barriers to real ones.
As I move to actual landscape alas it’s picturesque
as swirling half-moons rendered on black velvet
peddled at some country fair or sidewalk art show.

3.

Because an estate holder wanted his lands graced
with swans and the template of women twirling parasols
and with tiny sloops to try the barely agitated water,
the wind moved, but water wouldn’t budge by wind.
The water reflected the trees, which were not poplars,
the water reflected the women with the parasols
and white Hellenic dresses, and the swans were reflected.
The scenes were rendered on wood, with cornucopias
framing the scene, in which the features were reflected:
scattered acorns, fruit and flora in commemoration—
calla lilies and pine cones, other fruit to be identified.

4.

Rarely can I recall a dream with accuracy,
whenever I do, they’re jumbles of nonsense —
just the past respliced into juxtaposed ribbons.
But I must be thinking in these Piranesian castles,
walls that double as dams on the Androscoggin
where people skinny-dip in familiar places
with the unfamiliar tints of pearly skies
and pearly clouds doubling as pearly gates.
The dream is a grain of sand in an hourglass
but inside sprawls a time of infinite extension
that the shifting gears of a milk-truck interrupts
as skinny-dippers on the riverside, Anabaptists shed
of hippie-peasant dresses, tell me the water’s just fine.

—Scott Penney

Scott Penney lives in Chelsea, Vermont.