Yorkshire Dales: A Painting By Lydia Bauman

I

Two sheep are
two limestone rocks
on the scraped turf.

Bottom to top:
a pink and light blue base, a bumpy field,
a wood of witches' brooms,
a clearing of shadowed light, a denser wood
in orange leaf, a steep swept slope
with single tree, sheer scar, black fell,
bare plateau, blue strips of sky.

II

A shimmered landscape.
Do Monet's ghost and Seurat's shadow
haunt this painting?

Close up
it's formal as a theory:
opaque patterns, repetitions, strata.

But stand back, see it coalesce
(Chaos becoming Gaia)
into a Yorkshire scene:

as, from impressionistic haze,
emerge wild poppies or water lilies
or, from pointilliste dots,
Asnières or La Grande Jatte.

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