Egrets weave their way through a lush and floating world, stately icons that might well have illuminated a 15th century tapestry from Brussels, from Bruges. White silk strands of weft knotted onto woolen warp, they pose, adrift in green tufts redolent of dyestuffs and mordants, woad and weld, iron and alum; they might be gracing a wall of the Cloisters, reminiscent of The Unicorn in the Garden, but freed rather than fenced, amidst lily blossoms rather than pomegranates, brandishing beaks like rapiers in place of singular horns.

Or they might be the stylized creatures on an Isfahan rug resplendent on the floor of an Ottoman seraglio—figures of light set against a dark forest of yarns dyed in vats of rang-e wasma from Hormoz or Kabul, in turn stewed in potions of wild-gathered esparaknor, or cultivated gol-e rang—generation after generation of craftsmanship and knowledge producing green and blue-green and yellow-green platters of leaves, flat or rolled or curled, scattered with proud violet blossoms dyed with indigo and the ground root of rūnās; each bird poised, one with a beak of saffron strands, the other of Baluchistan black wool with orange-gold nose-ring; each as regally serene as a sultan’s principal wife, eyes alert, yet coyly diverted as they await his imminent entry into the sedate confines of their seclusion.

Snowy Egret and Great Egret (photograph) © by Elaine Soulé

All rights reserved. Image appears here with photographer’s permission.

Author’s Notes:

Thanks to my sister, Elaine Soulé, for allowing me to use her evocative image, which was awarded First Place in the Nature Category, Boise Camera Club 2019 Annual Awards. Her photography continues to inspire me. This photograph is not only a wonderfully rich collage on its own, but brought to my memory recollections of other almost iconic artistic works. Here are links to some images mentioned or alluded to in the poem:

The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (on view in Gallery 17 of The Met). The unicorn is depicted tethered and fenced and is set in a rich blue and green background. It is dated 1495-1505, was designed in France, and woven in the Southern Netherlands.

To me, the egrets’ poses also echo the bird forms used in the marvelously intricate Isfahan “Tree of Life” rugs.

And, finally, their stances brought to my mind the serenity of the figures of harem inhabitants as they are depicted in John Frederick Lewis’s 1873 painting The Reception (“an illustration of the women’s quarters in a seraglio”).

Here is a short glossary of a few terms:

• esparaknor* – weld, the plant Reseda luteola†, L., used for yellow dyes.
  
  
• gol-e rang* – safflower, the plant Carthamus tinctorius†, L., used for yellow dyes.
  
  
• Isfahan – A city located in Isfahan Province in central Iran, famous for its architecture and carpets.
  
  
• mordants – dye fixatives such as alum and various other metallic salts which may intensify colors, as well as make them more lightfast and washfast.
  
  
• rang-e wasma – blue dye made from the fermented leaves of indigo (Indigofera tinctoria†).
  
  
• rūnās* – madder, the plant Rubia tinctorum†, L., used for red dyes.
  
  
• seraglio – a harem.
  
  
• weld – See esparaknor* above.
  
  
• woad – the plant Isatis tinctoria†, L., used in Medieval Europe for blue dye prior to the importation of indigo.
  
  

* The asterisk denotes words that are transliterations of Arabic, following usage in Encyclopaedia Iranica: Carpets ii: Raw materials and dyes.

† The dagger denotes Latin binomial (Scientific, Genus and species) names of the plants used historically in Europe and Asia as sources for dyes.

Elaine Soulé

began her journey into photography in her late 20s, when she pursued an Associate of Arts degree in Photography at Chabot College in Hayward, California. After working in the corporate world for 40 years, she returned to photography in her 70s. She loves the creative freedom that digital cameras allow and finds photography these days to be a totally different but truly exhilarating experience.

Roy J. Beckemeyer’s

poetry collections include The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) and Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014), was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. With Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, he co-edited Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2015, 2020, and 2024) and for Best of the Net (2018), and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019.

A retired engineer and scientific journal editor, Beckemeyer is also a nature photographer who, in his spare time, researches the mechanics of insect flight and the Paleozoic insect fauna of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. He lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he and his wife celebrated their 62nd anniversary in November 2023.

Please visit author’s website for more information about his books, as well as links to selected works, and to interviews and readings (scroll down his About page for the latter link-list).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Gardener’s Caesura, ekphrastic cheribun by Beckemeyer in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 24, August 2024), awarded Second Place in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge