When I was an MFA student in the 70s, I bought a poster of an incredibly garish and overwrought painting called The Traveller by Pierre Ino. Even then, when I was much younger and unschooled in art criticism, the painting attracted me with its imagery and the mysterious story it seemed to tell. I thought it might make a decent poem and set about writing one. When I came to resurrect the poem for The Moon Sees the One in 2006, I sought out the painting again online to refresh my memory. To my astonishment, the poster was more popular than ever and could be viewed at dozens of web sites just by Googling Ino. The poem also seemed to me to have weathered the decades since its composition, though I'm still not sure it's any better than the painting. But it's mine now, for better or worse. (I was surprised and very pleased when Peter Riley declared it his favorite poem in Moon.)
Here it is, for what it's worth:
The Traveler
(after the painting by Pierre Ino)
Pausing, as if at a crossroads,
she stands in snow, wearing
the red mantle of insomnia,
carrying the long staff of
the outcast. Her boots are tinged
with blue, but the sky will have
little to do with her. It is not
the color of her boots but of
the bird that feigns indifference
as she passes. A gesture of entreaty
ecapes her ungloved hand and hangs,
awkward against the stiff air.
The bird looks away, grim as the gaping
lid of her empty basket: her bread is all
gone, her brothers and sisters, needle
and thread, her hairpins and Book of
the Woods. She could kill the bird
with her staff, not to eat, to spread
its blood upon the snow, to spread
her mantle and lie down in redness.
She gazes long at her blue-tinged
boots, then walks on without a
thought of killing the bird.
Candice Ward
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