ARTSPEAK! Poem #9 "Boat on a Pond"

Hello, and welcome to day #9 of ARTSPEAK!, my Poem-a-Day Project for National Poetry Month 2015, in which I am writing from images found in the online collections of the National Gallery of Art and focusing on dialogue, conversations, what does the piece say?

Today's piece is "Girl in a Boat with Geese" by Berthe Morisot.

Isn't this a lovely piece for spring? I first considered writing this poem from the geese's perspective... I imagined them taunting the girl in the boat. And then I started thinking about the boat itself. What would the boat have to say? The first lines that came to me were, "I am but wood / in a world of water." And then I went back to the geese, thinking, what if that was their taunt to the boat? But, I don't know, the painting is so joyful... I didn't want to "spoil" it with negativity. So I came back to the boat.

So, obviously, I ended up abandoning that first-thought line. I also ended up cutting another favorite... I had opened the poem with this stanza:

Once a tree,

I am no longer

rooted.

I love that! It could be the haiku version of this poem! As in....

boat --

a tree no longer 

rooted

But it gives away the whole poem, doesn't it? When what I want to do is leave a surprise in there for the reader. The way it stands now, the reader gets to discover that unrootedness with "tree" at the start and the later mention of "wings."

Funny thing: I just realized I've written this title like 3 different ways! I think I like "Boat on a Pond" best. Thank you for reading!