Cosmos

The lines flow, contain, jiggle, swirl, stand alone,
clutter, turn to triangles, feel like a battlefield.
There are a few colors there, in blocks and shapes,
all feeling, but only at first, random.
But they eye is uncomfortable with random.
The heart too does not live well in a random world
and so, the longer you stand, the more you see
direction. Patterns. It all makes you think.
Is it a map? Is it madness? Is it, as it feels, a battlefield.
And then you wonder what your map of the cosmos
would look like. Would it bleed? Is there a way to draw
and paint love and abandonment? Is there a way to diagram
triumph and persistence? A way to show emptiness
in such a way that people can see it.
But only if they stop a while, and look.

About this poem.

Inspired by the painting, Stadia III, by Julie Mehretu, shown above (I took the photograph at the Virginia Museum in Richmond, Virgina.). She describes the painting as trying to show a cosmos, a system of life and universe, in a painting.

I saw it back in April and the idea (the idea more than the painting itself) has had me thinking, how would I draw/paint my own sense of cosmos? I have a canvas sitting on and easle in the studio, waiting for me to figure it out.

Tom