For Day Fourteen of Paul Brookes’ Ekphrastic Challenge, I’ve responded to these two works of art.

• 

• 

The Confessor

With unruly hair, capped-tamed,
she stood before the white-wigged judges
to confess the sins of her wandering mind.

On and on her words poured out
to dance around the room—
the dreams she’d seen, the visions hued
in blue and gold and silver-

streamed they rushed from head and heart,
of a specter at a portal, a future seen
of cities now invisible, but that would someday gleam–
tall towers reflecting the sun, rising high

and bridges spanning rivers, and ships that sailed the sky.
No witch, am I. Only a dreamer.

The watchers sighed. The dazed and dazzled judges called for order,
and she was punished, a time in the stocks and weary-work
to check her mind’s meanderings.

But even a small spark…