Art: Feux d Artifice sur Canal Saint-Martin, Paris by Boré Ivanoff
Taken at the Flood
“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
JULIUS CAESAR IV, iii, 217
Market Street spills from St. Agnes’ stones and gaping nave
then rises beyond frankincense— vanishing into hillside
forests of cedar and pine, into groves of wild iris silent as silk,
Night spoons with dawn this Sunday
Bells do not yet take their toll
We climb the first slope to where
stars turn boulders to bronze sovereigns
and frogs are poets — Their syllables
roll into the valley — tumble beneath
balconies and shuttered windows
flicker in the gathering light —wind among
the dead — dislodge the dead from granite
Their sighs fill Market Street’s jagged cracks, make grasses quiver —
Bells drown them all with brooding vowels — bring Sunday
to its knees on St. Agnes’ stones — draw us
into her bones and — molten blood
We cling to reeds and boulders, to fallen stars and to each other
to the hum of poets hidden in saplings and honey daubed air
“Lean into their hum,” I say. We spin ourselves up this nameless path,
stir ourselves into morning’s sweet lightning, vanish into cedar and pine,
into wild iris silent as silk
– Carol Davis Koss
3/23/04
edited 6/18/2022 with help from Yun Wang
Geneva:1943: Espionage
In a bar on a street
with a French name –
though not in love,
we wind our arms
as if to sip
from each other’s
translucent goblets,
drink in the drone
of English, French,
of Italian and
between breaths –
German staccato
We lean into smoke
curtained mirrors
decoding our own faces
peering beyond walls
of resonant flesh
undeciphered – without
touching eyes or words,
knowing we are followed
to the lake’s edge
where mountains
are flayed through rents
in a looking-glass
squeezed through its prism
into filaments whose casings
grow transparent
and vanish
Passage du Grand Cerf, Paris 2ème
Not Too Far; Nothing Untoward
We leaned over the bridge’s rail
leaned enough to watch turtles – mottled
outcroppings on rust patched stone —
and fish – mere glints and shades
paper boats – loosed by a small boy
picnicking with his mother
who guarded him with one eye
and napped with the other
with his father who nursed a beer
and Sunday
We leaned merely to observe
lilies that appeared to float
We bent sufficiently
to see a snake sunning
and an egret alert
to fish and snake
to turtles
paper boats
small boys
and our reflections
rooted like the lilies
– Carol Davis Koss
6/15/09
Edited – with help from Yun Wang February 21, 2022
Painting Sky Writing*
(“It’s all horizon.” Carl Sennhenn)
I
Your first struggle was clouds
and their shades of gray
veins of sun and silver blue
their edges which could not
be edged but rimless must slip
into blue blue light and lighter
feathered colors hued to bright
shadows lit from retinal ether
II
When clouds no longer drew
your hand nor imagination
it was sky itself that flexed
your brush pupil and teacher
sky that wound cerulean
and ash; plaited ochre into
azure and threaded lumens
through evening’s house of cards
Mercury rising — dusk falling
III
Red sod and spring’s imminence
range west past sunset
your palette waxes with night’s
colors, your fingers choose a brush
fine enough to thin the moon’s
slimness to fragile memory
and I know it is true –
(It is all horizon.)
– Carol Davis Koss
4/20/03
*Dedicated to plein air painter Kate Palmer
About the author:
By birth a New Yorker, Carol Davis Koss lived in Oklahoma City for over forty years, and now resides in Sacramento. She has taught English, Creative Writing, and Remedial Reading from middle school through college, in venues that range from wealthy suburbs to the South Bronx; from churches to prisons. She is the author of Chapter and Verse (1997), Camera Obscura (2001 Oklahoma Book Award finalist), and Painted Full of Tongues (2002). Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Best Minds, Best of MAP (Map of Austin Poetry), Bomb: A Collection of Poetry by Oklahoma Poets, Long Islander Newspaper: Walt’s Corner, Poems for the New Decade, Broomweed, Nimrod, Art Focus Oklahoma, Cross Timbers, and Elegant Rage: A Poetic Tribute to Woody Guthrie. A graduate of the City College of New York, she has a Master’s in English from Purdue University, and has done post master’s work at Teachers College (Columbia University) and the University of Oklahoma.
In the artist’s words:
Boré Ivanoff, born in Stara Zagora in Bulgaria in 1968, is a contemporary painter currently working and residing between Paris and the South-West of France. At the turn of the new millennium, Ivanoff moved from Bulgaria to the French capital, and started painting up to today.
He enjoys a dynamic international career with his works exhibited across Europa, and featuring in various public and private collections.
After several exhibitions in Bulgaria around the 1990s, Ivanoff takes on the Paris art scene, before showcasing his work internationally. As a result, he has exhibited in France, Bulgaria, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
