Poem: “Frames”

Sketch by Dustin Renwick.

by Dustin Renwick

nudged by the bay breezes

or perhaps lured by an exterior

painted in everyone else’s names,

she decided to enter the art gallery

at the end of the dock

the old barn for boats now home to a

celebration of other people’s creativity

she walked without seeking until

stopped by a screen door

locked to travelers, but providing safe passage

for those bay breezes that might have

urged her here, to this place,

where the metal forms tiny casings of the canvas worlds

inside and out

how much more does a gallery succeed

when an audience becomes an artist

and her palette fits in the pocket of her white jeans

pulled tight around her frame:

she stands between the ideas boxed and hung

near each elbow, decked in checkered blue and white,

and squares the summer harbor through two screens

I watch her and wonder

in whose imagination are we the picture?

Dustin Renwick runs, writes, and does not drink coffee. His poetry has appeared in The Daily Palette (an extension of The Iowa Review), Verse Wisconsin, and Quercus. His most recent book, Beyond the Gray Leaf, was published this year. Tupelo Press selected him as a 30/30 poet, and you can read a new poem each day in July.

The above poem was written as part of Write On, Door County’s ART/SPEAKS events, which offer writers of all genres a chance to experience various forms of art and write about them in any form they choose. ART/SPEAKS opportunities are presented in art, music and theater venues throughout Door County. Gallery events take place at Edgewood Orchard Galleries in Fish Creek the third Monday of each month (through October), 10:30 am – noon; at the Hardy Gallery in Ephraim the fourth Wednesday of every month (the August program will take place the third Wednesday of the month) through October, 2:30 – 4 pm; and at Margaret Lockwood Gallery in Sturgeon Bay the second Friday of every month, 11:30 am – 1 pm, year round. For more information, visit WriteOnDoorCounty.org/Events/.