September 8, 2014 | Occasus | Issue 4 | Poetry
Mosaic
It
is certainly in pieces,
but whether the shimmer from the little shards of green glass casts a dazzling gleam on the pieces of purple remains to be seen. I think more likely they are isolated dots of light, small towns on a map of the countryside or little specks seen from space with the vast acres of darkness in between to keep the glass from cutting deep into the blues or pinks. Like grout. The grout a kind of shell for each little piece of jagged, shining glass like the repulsion field of atom that keeps them from ever touching, despite the apparent solidity of the Laurentian Shield. Painting with glass leaves your fingers bloody, since the colours won’t mix on the pallet. White, brown, yellow, black stay separate no matter how hard you push them together on the canvas. A small corner on the pallet is reserved for the red and, as it stands, the impurities of the white flow in this direction. The red also serves as a handy receptacle for the drops of blood that come from painting with glass. You may call this piece a mosaic, and standing at a distance you will not see each shard pushing to crowd out the other, melting away the colour opposition, but instead the broken glass will even seem to come together – if you’re standing far enough away – and, yes, the little shards of purple and green will even start to cast a favourable light in each other’s direction. |
EVAN PEBESMA is in the fourth year of his Honors Specialization in English Literature. He has published works in Feathertale and Huron College's Grub Street.