I Spied a Man Sketching

I Spied A Man Sketching  :  Susan Kohn Green

Yesterday, while walking the dog 

On our usual route in the park,

I spied a man sitting on a bench,

Sketching..

Of course, I had to see what he was doing,  so -

Very nonchalantly -  I strolled , with the dog,

Up onto the little rise of grass behind the bench and

Peered down.

He was using an Arches 300 lb hot press paper:

That in itself told me he knew what he was doing;

And yes, the drawing was full of

knowledge.

 I liked it a lot.

There was a figure of an alien nearly center, 

Colored in darkness: Crimsons, Prussian blues,

Surrounded by spiked trees, hidden grotesques,

Cruel faces hidden in the black lines, not yet colored,

Stark, full of menace;  vampirish skulls lurking.

What struck me was that he was using the trees I knew –

Intimately – as models;

A linden whose aroma sent perfume across the lawn in spring,

A cherry tree whose blossoms rang pink.

The gentle, green, rolling sunlit scene –

Using My trees to create  

A graphic nightmare forest of menace.

Now, is that what he actually saw:

Tree- spears growing thorns

Up and down their shafts;

An outgrowth of terror

That would tear flesh apart, unable to escape

The dense tangle of spikes? 

And gargoyles hidden in twisted vines

Or did he use the shapes of the pleasant trees as only a basis for Inspiration?

And build this forest of peril from his imagination?

I remembered the panic that I had, as a child,

As those Apple Trees in the Wizard of Oz

Stretched their limbs, 

Grabbing at Dorothy and the Scarecrow

As they made their way through the forest to Oz. 

There was terrible fear and the nightmares of those branches

That had become spindly arms and gnarled, bony fingers –

Skeletal -

Clutching the air

As they tried to capture the innocents.

And tree knots turned into grimaces, threatening with violence.

What do people realize in the ordinary, in the lovely, in the usual?  

What do people imagine them to be?

And why?