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      May 22, 2025Ryan T. PozziWhat the Pages Know

      The path was never paved.
      She found it by accident
      or memory
      or whatever it is that calls you
      back to something unfinished.
       
      They hung in the air like birds
      or verdicts.
      Some fluttered when she passed.
      Others turned their backs
      and refused to fall.
       
      She thought at first they were poems.
      Bright, fragile,
      alive with the trick of language.
      But closer,
      they were older than words.
       
      A red one bore her grandmother’s voice,
      tucked into the shape of a bedtime song.
      A blue one flashed the hour
      she forgot how to pray.
       
      There was the pink she almost wore
      to the wedding that never happened.
      And one that smelled like
      the night she left.
       
      She tried to gather them
      but they dissolved when held,
      like stories told too often
      or people too long gone.
       
      She looked up
      and saw more coming.
      Pages. Birds. Ghosts.
      Who could say.
       
      The clearing ahead shimmered,
      not with light
      but with possibility.
       
      She didn’t walk faster.
      She didn’t turn back.
      She simply kept going
      until she, too,
      was part of the air.
       
      Image: “Green Wood Birds” by Stephanie Trenchard. “What the Pages Know” was written by Ryan T. Pozzi for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2025, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

      from Ekphrastic Challange

      Comment from the artist, Stephanie Trenchard

      “There were so many stunning poems. Thank you to all the writers who looked at my painting and offered brilliant responses. ‘What the Pages Know’ articulates the essence of this painting and leads me to understand my own artwork as a collage of memories or ‘whatever it is that calls you/ back to something unfinished.’ The poet writes that the spots of color were ‘alive with the trick of language’ reminding me that words and colors are metaphors for specific feelings, perhaps assigned to something as ethereal as ‘the hour/ she forgot to pray’ or ‘the pink she almost wore.’ I love the vapor-like energy of these ‘birds or verdicts’ that keep pulsating throughout our lives but that we cannot capture because they ‘dissolve(d) when held, like stories told too often/ or people gone too long,’ the melancholy of time and space. The exchange from the painting to the poems offers great insight into my own practice. I enjoyed reading all the poems.”

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