From the archives – Monet to his Wife, While Winding the Sheets — Kristin Roedell

Monet to his Wife, While Winding the Sheets
—after Claude Monet’s “Camille on Her Deathbed.” 1879. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

I’ve seen life leaving small things:
a tabby cat,
a red winged bird;
once I held a dog I loved
as breath grew shallow and rare.
But you, Camille, are a complicated thing.

I think of clocks, of coils and gears
and springs and hands;
I think of time and ticking
and how your fingers
were light, precise, and small.

This morning you lay veiled and absent.
I painted you a final time;
Camille, you fled
and took with you every hue.

What remains is as simple
as a broken bird,
as a clock run down.
What remains
are these dark and
flightless hours.

by Kristin Roedell

from Autumn Sky Poetry Number 19, October 2010