We have rendered nature an easy god to worship.
						—J. B. MacKinnon, “False Idyll,” Orion.

The plein air paradise she sets her easel to
is nothing she has captured before—
autumn’s phosphorus reflected 
in the sizzle of river surface,
to paint the fireworks as they last.

She solicits the match of colors, pampers brushes, 
squints to see values vying for their importance. 
She washes intimidation from the teasing white—
not as a broom might declare a room dust free, 
but knows the paper will be forever drying.

In the moment of flow, she is frenzied 
toward the vanishing point of gravity’s path.
She floats that distance on rapids of passion,
on cool blues accepting falling leaves of flame.

Abandoning intention, 
she loses herself in deceptive eddies, 
choking on nature’s beauty. 
She is tumbled, dunked by real abstraction, 
the impossible representation. 
The river becomes a terror, last light gurgling 
like the breath in the exhaustion of miracle.