Nouvelle 55 x 2: Yorkshire Dales

Yorkshire Dales: a print by LYDIA BAUMAN

I

Two sheep are
two limestone rocks
on the scraped turf.

Bottom to top:
a pink and light blue base, a bumpy field,
a wood of witches' brooms,
a clearing of shadowed light, a denser wood
in orange leaf, a steep swept slope
with single tree, sheer scar, black fell,
bare plateau, blue strips of sky.

II

A shimmered landscape.
Do Monet's ghost and Seurat's shadow
haunt this painting?

Close up
it's formal as a theory:
opaque patterns, repetitions, strata.

But stand back, see it coalesce
(Chaos becoming Gaia)
into a Yorkshire scene:

as, from impressionistic haze,
emerge wild poppies or water lilies
or, from pointilliste dots,
Asnières or La Grande Jatte.

Nouvelle 55: Dawn After The Wreck



JMW TURNER Dawn After The Wreck (1840)

It ended badly:
the sextant smashed,
the rocks rearing,
the storm’s screaming furies,
the ship lashed and wrecked.

Later, an insubstantial watery dawn,
with little trace of those few dark hours:
only some ragged clouds,
a worn-out, ravaged sea,
both sand and sky opaquely mirroring
a troubled calm,
a dog
howling at the crescent moon.

(This is my attempt at a nouvelle 55, a piece of flash fiction written in only 55 words and based on a work of art. Thanks to Ruth over at synch-ro-ni-zing for the inspiration! For an explanation of what flash fiction or micro fiction is read this.)