Paul Klee’s Rising Star

By John Brantingham

PROMPT — I will not rest until ...

Klee has drawn the elements of a man’s

face, eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, and he includes

what rises inside him, a star that would

clarify to others his compassion

because we all have the capacity

for that and love and humor and honor.

This is the central fact of who we are

rising in us, Klee’s star of humanity.

There are other central facts of course.

That we are pliable. That we have to know

we have a choice in order to have a choice.

That the cretins of world can and have forced

young men to kill, convinced them that’s who

they are, and silenced that star’s quiet voice.

---

John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He is a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. John writes from Jamestown, NY.