Another Exile Paints a Spring Portrait of Katherine Mansfield by Riemke Ensing

(for Eric McCormick)

There are all these lines
without words telling you a whole
story. The portrait is a yellow table
a gingko leaf shaped fan you think
might smell of sandalwood, a paperweight
some flying sheets of paper and a Chinese
vase of ‘yellow-grey, 2 blues and brown’ [guess who]
curving itself round mountains and the wide open
branches of trees looking