Flag on Orange Field — Jasper Johns

3 thoughts on “Flag on Orange Field — Jasper Johns”

1. THE FOURTH

   So trim, so modern, doing op tricks
   When it’s brisk, doubling back on itself and forming diamonds;
   The light let through cut with its own shadow;
   The stripes curled around themselves on the Bridge of Flowers.
   It has enabled at least one artist to become a millionaire.
   Rippling, blazing forth, all the straight lanes of daytime
   Epitomised by red and white, with night
   In its corner in front of the house
   With grey paint peeling from it at the corner
   Of Dodge Branch Road. Sometimes
   You can’t see the stars. Catch it in front of farms
   On knolls, at the bridge, at the edge of lawns,
   Limp above a little ceramic fisher-boy and his shepherdess friend,
   Accompanying a proud Mobil Pegasus
   And above Aubuchon Hardware.
   It can be glimpsed below the road above a dark old barn
   Or slung from the first floor window of an ugly house
   Halfway down a gradient on the Mohawk Trail
   But not above the trading-post. As
   You pull up at the three lane lights by Macdonald’s,
   Which flies one from its own pole –
   Thankfully unaccompanied by an M –
   You may reflect that it looks best
   On native soil, acting as a banner for
   Franklin First and the Freedom Credit Union
   And Ford Motors, which has five of them!
   But there it is again, flown from a lamp-post
   In front of the Greenfield Energy Plant
   And actually from all the lamps in Greenfield.

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2. Lovely poem.

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3. […] via Flag on Orange Field — Jasper Johns — Biblioklept […]

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