Autumn (after Joan Mitchell)

I am startled by silence
appearing suddenly, grey, tangled, dense–
all color has fallen away,
hanging by whispers to sharp edges and desolation.

I reach for wind–
carry me to fields where sun
returns blue to sky,
calls trees to green.

The NaPoWriMo prompt for Day 18 was to take lines from a poem (backwards, from last to first) and write a response to each line to make your own poem.  Since I have been using the art of Joan Mitchell as inspiration this month, I was pleased to find that she had published a poem, “Autumn”, in Poetry Magazine.  You can read it here.