From the summer bower, watch flame burn into the canvas of horizon. The painter hastens ahead of the blaze, turning orange to red and blue to purple. He imagines the roiling belly of the ocean and the navel of the earth as, fed green wood, the fire smolders, smears smoke over the sun and pierces clouds with broken pottery shards. Then shines through midnight.
Poised on the lips of the world, midnight dances, her smoky darkness filling the cracks left by moisture and scratches. Where she loves and bleeds, so bloom the roses. And someone somewhere fills water in a clay basin and that water rises to the lips of the world and overflows and rinses the canvas clean and so lies the painter in his bed of blackened roses.