Idling in ReLoved, spellbound in the museum ...

There was 1930s dance hall music playing in ReLoved - 

A girl in a red dress bought me an Americano - 

I dipped black bread into my soup - 

Eccentric china graced a dark sideboard - 

I resolved to try the Morrocan vegetable stew the next time I idled here -

Downstairs, a willowy boy re-arranged mossy dinner jackets - 

*

I spent the afternoon gazing at John Craxton's paintings - 

I saw Dorset landscapes bathed in otherwordly light - poets sat under golden trees -

Knowlton Church was like a boat on a glowing sea - a crescent moon illuminated a haunted wood - 

Cretan sailors drank with the painter in a dangerous bar - 

Elegant dancers linked sinewy arms - 

The bright pagan sun of Crete flooded the Victorian galleries - 

A beautiful cat eyed a fish in glass bowl - 

In the painter's last picture, completed just before his death, two birds fly towards a tree - 

I thought I heard their song, felt the air stirred by their swept back wings - 

Thursday September 17 2015

ReLoved

Dorset County Museum

John Craxton Exhibition

"A Poetic Eye, John Craxton on Cranbourne Chase and Crete"

Dortchester