Former Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2009-2010) Marilyn Taylor’s poem “Accidental Reflections” has been named a finalist in the 2014 Able Muse-sponsored “Write Prize” poetry and fiction contest. It appeared in the Winter 2014 Able Muse Review and the online version was released for the first time on Dec. 20.
Here is the poem, with an editor’s comment about the accompanying illustrations:
River II: Accidental Reflections
On the lower sheet, the left-most image was printed upside down. River II
preserves this accidental reflection.
—Ellsworth Kelly
An accident, was it? Reflections often are
precisely that: little glints of clarity
in a wash of ruffled chaos—like a star
winking and sputtering unimpressively
behind the curtain of competing light
that we call ambient. And this is how
you realized a way to recreate
the chronicles of rivers: upside down,
purling backward, puckering a skein
of water with your brushes, showing where
a wrinkle on the surface might explain
the rocks below. But only here and there—
reflecting, in your enigmatic way,
what rivers might or might not have to say.
Read more about Marilyn, who is a Council for Wisconsin Writers board member, on her website at http://www.wiswriters.org/taylor.htm and on the CWW website at www.wiswriters.org/taylor.htm