Endless Summers

Immersing myself in cool, clear
Turquoise water beneath slivers of sunlight
Until I am imprisoned in your acrylic painting
Beneath layers and layers of cobalt
My mind – scrubbed clean – pristine

Puritanical. An nun-like disposition
That kind of bright light
That is impossible to paint
All pageantry, all colour disappears
My room becomes a bare cell

In which I decay. That white wall
A void, like the sky in those landscapes
You create. Blank and impassive
Seemingly infinite. Devoid of clouds, a sun
So merciless I wonder what we have become

Trapped within the endless summers
Depicted on your canvas – parched now
No buds shoot up through the earth
The sun is bright, lurid, blinding
And I find no shelter beneath your bare trees