Notions: Matisse, a Parrot, and the Fate of Wallace Stevens

Matisse has fallen asleep
 in a puddle of pastels.

He awakens at a vast red table
 of his own making.

A bowl of blue lemons
 becomes the center

and also a flower 
 imported from a province

of green belief arranges
 herself as another

center—head and torso
 filled with blossoms

requiring no specific pigment
 or love.

So the parrot who rouses
 the prodigal to return

disappears in the  medieval
 sun—splash of several

feathers & losses—and carries
 away Wallace Stevens

dressed in his best white suit
 of cotton, with orchids

pressed in his pockets. Beauty,
 they sing, in a tongue

only the truest believers will know.

--dw