NEWS

(Marguerite Williams photo)

a woman in sensible shoes wrestles
a step ladder to the middle of the road
among a gaggle of children. She climbs
the clanking swaying metal and balances
on the very top rung. She’s the highest point

on the hill. Fumbling in her skirt pockets she finds
a large pair of pinking shears and reaches up,
her elbows angled like bird wings. What is
she cutting? The sky? She’s cutting the sky.
A slit—easy, like cutting silk and quiet
except for the screech of the shears. They need
oil. The woman snips around three sides:
a rectangle like a window shade rolls to the top
where she snips it across and takes it down.
A blank space, a darkness in the day. What’s there?
a bit of face, an eye, a mouth? The moon’s brother?
Only glimpses. The sky closes over itself like water.

The woman drags her ladder to the ditch,
drops her shears and walks to town
with the roll of sky settled under her arm.
And the children follow her to the art gallery,
the one installing a show entitled: Realism.