My  friend and writing partner Erica Bodwell sent me this twin set of pictures, and my first reaction was, “Are you sure you want to give me this great material?” But Erica knows her own mind, and--as she said--she can always do her own riff in her own time. So I took a swing at it. The poem's called "Looking for the Original" and will be up at Tupelo around noon today. In the meantime, here's a group of stanzas: 

Someone—he may call himself

the family artist—

takes a photo of this girl

then makes it over

into a drawing.

In both pictures she is seven,

the season is summer, she’s

curled on a bright red rug,

which he uses to frame her. First,

the rug holds the girl, the original girl,

and then each picture in its turn

surrounds her, trains our eyes on her. 

As some of you may have noticed, I love to write in response to a work of art. First, there's the whole visual description challenge. Beyond that, I'm intrigued by the way the art of words and the art of image/shape/color fulfill each other (and fail each other). But finally, I feel such a poem forces me to grapple with the question of which is truth, where is truth. And for me, that's the heart of writing poetry. Going in after the truth.

So lecture over. I need to thank Kathy DiMaggio and Wendy Reidel for coming through with another two prompts. Whew! And you two are the best. Anyone else got a notion? Go here and drop it off.