At Crystal Bridges Museum*

On its own wall, 103 x 112 inches.
The girls called me over. We were nearing
the end of the museum’s last building,
and even they kept sitting down.
I was transfixed with a crowd
around a bust of wax and cotton
and human hair trying to absorb
how realism can outdo itself.
But the girls called me to this,
titled for delight, or so the wall plaque said.
It must have been sunset,
an auroran sky coloring the water
while some creature sits on stone,
observing. We could not say
if it were cat or bear, its back to us,
but I say cat, for the sky, the shore,
the land is full of birds, all busy at flight .
It has to be cat, I say, a heaven for cat,
a heaven of desire and light and repose.
I say fallen-log-framed view,
a calm riposte after all that once
drove us beyond our endurance.

*: Enassamishhinjijweian by Tom Uttech

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Carol Hamilton has recent and upcoming works appearing in Southwestern American Literature, Bluestem, Louisiana Review, Commonweal, Common Ground, Sanskrit Literary Magazine, U.S.1 Worksheet, Homestead Review, Poem, Haight Ashbury Poetry Journal, Broad River Review, Louisiana Literature, Off the Coast, Birmingham Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Oklahoma Humanities and others. She has published 17 books: children’s novels, legends and poetry, most recently, SUCH DEATHS from Virtual Arts Cooperative Press Purple Flag Series. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize seven times.