Having nothing better to do,
on a midnight whim
I stand tall toe to tip atop
the venerable Washington Monument,
my arms reaching out to the world around me.
As I embrace myself, I slip
from the obelisk and plummet five hundred feet,
landing in the Phillips Gallery and step
into Renoir’s impressionistic Le Dejeuner des canotiers,
a holiday gathering of Parisians on the balcony
of the Maison Fournaise at Chatou
overlooking the Seine.
The proprietor’s daughter Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise,
leaning on the railing, smiles with a wink
and asks her brother Alphonse,
the bearded man in the straw boater’s hat,
to pour me a glass of Sauvignon blanc.
Seated opposite Alphonsine,
Baron Raoul Barbier,
once the mayor of colonial Saigon,
tips his brown bowler.
Poet and critic Jules Laforge, the young man standing in the rear wearing the brown cap, introduces me
to the actress Angele Legault, and the artist Paul Lhote
stops flirting with the actress Jeanne Samary
long enough to introduce the journalist Adrien Maggiolo
standing next to Renoir’s patron Gustave Caillebotte
wearing a white boater’s shirt and flat-topped straw hat
and seated precariously across the table from
the seamstress Renoir plans to marry,
Aline Charigot who has eyes only for her small dog.
Having exceeded my limit of Sauvignon,
and nearly blinded by the intense light
reflected in Renoir’s spontaneity of pure color,
I bid adieu to the festive assembly, and in my exit
trip over Renoir’s close friend Eugene Pierre Lestringez,
knocking the top hat of wealthy art historian
Charles Ephrussi into the Seine.
I do an inebriated leap over the rail to rescue the hat
wending its way toward the Chatou railroad bridge
barely visible beneath the red and white awning
in the upper left corner of the canvas.
Everyone is amused.
Even Ephrussi.
The hat and I disappear in the laughter.
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Carole~
Anna
Cheers,
Dan
Very lasting images to live forever in my mind...
Be well,
Christine
With Love,
Chanti Lace xoxo
& this is a loud party!!
and as you took me there
I went there...surely I did
as I was watching you & everyone else
I sat down at the table and someone
started playing thigh tag with me
(nicely hidden by the table cloth draping downward)
but then as you & that hat disappeared...
Love's Bounty & Canvas
Vickie
no balls were dropped in this excursion into fine art, a lesson for all to learn... what makes us most yearn?
Love,
Sage
he lets me walk into the painting and I mingle
with characters of distinction.
Erudition sits easily here, almost throwaway
as it should be.
You're in top form, Gene, and this is a delight.
John
Sheila
And why not spend some time talking to Baron Raoul Barbier, once the mayor of colonial Saigon and ask him what French colonial Saigon was like. My next book starts in Vietnam. I might have learned something new.