PoetryEtc Featured Poet: Mark Weiss   

I wake up having dreamed both
a poem and
a painting that even
my severest critic enjoys. "Given time"
he says "I see a tree
in everything" the great
shape of a cloud rising
between two pieces of bare American earth.
A lot of paint. It's like
my poem, I say,
called "American Language."
Among the mesas of the high prairie
driving west aware
that if the bomb fell I'd have
some time left, and the cloud ahead
radiant, broken,
in the various light, reds, purples,
a tree of light,
the mesas yellow and the sky
a deep, deep blue,
as deep as it is,
as deep as space. The car
soars
forever.
There is no foreground
except the road. The
American language.

from A Block Print by Kuniyhoshi, 1994