After René Magritte, Castle in the Pyrenees (1959)
Here I am, alone, atop a boulder—suspended over
cold water. My stone castle has a thousand rooms.
In each room, light angles through a tall glass pane
and illuminates the space in a different way.
Every day, I move my heart to another room—
emptied of all I once accumulated, amassed,
hoarded, prized. Now, nothing but these myriad
qualities of light, these harsh cries of gulls,
these infinite distances of sky.
(Artwork can be found here: https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-castle-of-the-pyrenees-1959)
Alone
Laura Ann Reed holds a BA in French/Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and completed Master’s Degree Programs in the Performing Arts, and Psychology. She was a dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to assuming the role of Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She and her husband now reside in western Washington. Her work has been anthologized in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Grey Sparrow, MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Willawaw, and other journals.