Barbara Lydecker Crane

At this Height        
     Cader Idris, Llyn-y-Cau, a painting by Richard Wilson, 
     c.1770-1774, Wales

I breathe the bracing mountain air of Wales
     after years in gritty Rome
with cheap red wine. I raise my flask of whiskey,
     toasting my ancestral home.

It’s a relief to turn my back, as well, 
     to witless tourists on their tour,
buying only hackneyed scenes. I seek
     new subjects now, wild and pure.             

The enhancement of this scene is all my own—
     the rocky pinnacle that I heighten,
the lake an onyx mirror that I polish,
     the morning sky that I brighten.
     
Whiskey and sun make a grand pair
     today, at the peak of my power in Wales. 
Hang the critics and the buyers, too—
     I toast to my art and not my sales.

Prize-winning poet Barbara Lydecker Crane’s collection You Will Remember Me, sonnets about portrait paintings in the imagined voices of their various artists, was published by Able Muse Press in 2023.  Kelsay Books will soon publish her fifth collection, Art & Soul.