I sat on the rock just down from the bridge,
Its steel looming there, a confirmation
That, though I had crested the hill, the ridge,
I could not escape civilization.
It is not that I had turned my back
On humanity, but that I had put
Before me what I had sought to unpack,
Why I had come to the river barefoot:
To think, yet to slip into unthought,
To listen to and watch the river flow,
And to regard fully what I had brought:
Feeling ungrateful and a little low.
And as I climbed again back to the road,
I found my shameful thoughts dimmed and slowed.

/ / /

This poem was written to the day twenty-eight prompt at Poetic Asides to write a remix poem. I’ve remixed “River” – a free verse poem from day two over at NaPoWriMo – into a sonnet.

Georges-Pierre Seurat, the youngest child
Of Antoine and Ernestine, delicate and mild
In his sensibility, but with a precision of mind,
Logically and mathematically inclined.
He played with color and light,
Colors muted and colors circus bright.
There were islands and bathers,
A mix of humanity and nature.
A concealed love, Madeleine,
And Pierre-Georges, a young son,
Seurat himself dead at thirty-one.
Leaving the world of men
Two weeks later, dead too the son,
Leaving the familial legacy undone.

/ / /

This poem was written in response to the painter poem prompt at Poetic Asides and the sad poem prompt at NaPoWriMo.