Charter {An ekphrastic poem for Ellsworth Kelly’s painting Charter}

Black block placed portentously. Feet planted, unshifting.

Orange rests, balancing on toe-s tips or press-ed lips

White’s stagnance filling stilled air, the air orange dares not to expand, disrupt.

I wait for change on X’s axis

But maybe black is stuck, pried with cruel, canvas clamps

I speak as orange: If I pull on blackened border, I will be against walls I have yet to touch, security in sharp

indifference rather than to venture where I do not know. Trust what is had is better than worse.

But perhaps I will

smoosh against straightened edge. Squishing to fill cornered cuts.

Kill the light whitened. Innocence dispersed.

Or may be to push and pull is to blend and not relocate.

Become a molded tangerine, but the kind found in a stupidly

poetic photo; a dumpster next to a forest. Would white find its way to the top? Forgotten stains.

I wait for change on Y’s axis.

And maybe black will shift, and agency not requested. To wait for unpromised promises to be,

merely suggested.

So long as shoulders graze, lips resting. Temperature’s transfer keeps me taut.

I wait for change on Z’s axis.

Waiting for a shift in dimension,

A dimension.

Nonexistent.