He’s placed dramatically center stage
by Benjamin West—Benjamin Franklin.
His gray hair flies. He’s getting on in age.
Electricity coming from lightning!
He’s dressed in dark clothes with a white tied tie.
His brow is furrowed and his face is lit.
His red cape sweeps up into windy sky.
A key hangs from a string; he faces it.
Around his gadgets and himself, one sees
a scattering of unclothed cherubim.
Beneath the storm he is about to seize
a truth that will become a part of him.
One sees the clouds; one hardly sees the kite;
he’s seizing in his left hand something white,
while raising up his right.
Featured Image: ‘Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky’ by Benjamin West.
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I haven’t gotten back to Ms. Danielle—for nearly a decade—but here is another 19th century painting by Beau Ecs Wilder:
117
by Beau Ecs Wilder
It is a Turner painting, “Evening Star”—“117”,
impressionistic, realistic, even heavenly.
It goes so far into the frame, the beach, the sea, the sky,
and sighs forth in tranquility, a size-inspiring sight.
There is a leaping dog, a boy with shrimping net and creel,
who wades in from the shoreline. Here is little industry.
The ghostly trace of a boat’s place to right of center space,
the still and horizontal scape of purples, pinks and grays,
reflected in the water, and, too, shining in the air,
two tiny dabs of shiny white, the presence of a star.
In structure, the difference is between a going-beyond sonnet, and a tennos.