Le Bateau-atelier

In a quiet place of greens and greys,
of rippling reflections and pensive days,

a place to muse on form and shape,
in the changing light of the waterscape,

the river’s fringed with leafy trees
that tremble in a gentle breeze

and waver in the flowing river
as if reflected in a mirror.

In the solitude of his atelier,
the artist paints in greens and greys,

capturing the iridescent gleam
as it passes him by midstream.

Kim M. Russell, 16th September 2025

Claude Monet, The Studio Boat (Le Bateau-atelier), 1876, Oil on canvas.
The Barnes Foundation, BF730. In the public domain.

This Tuesday at the dVerse Poets Pub our host for Poetics is Merril, who tells us that, a few weeks ago, she and her husband went to the Barnes Museum in Philadelphia, where her eye was caught by a Monet painting: ‘The Studio Boat’.

Merril says that she loves reflections and rivers, as well as reflecting about many things, including reflections.  She says that reflection is a fun word that can mean the image you see in a mirror, glass, polished surface, or water. It can also mean to muse upon something. Merril gives us the example of Jorge Luis Borges’s poem, ‘We are the time. We are the famous’, which does both.

Merril gives us two options for today’s challenge: either write an ekphrastic poem inspired by Claude Monet’s ‘The Studio Boat’ or write a poem on reflection, whatever that means to us—self-reflection, reflection on time’s passing, a reflection in a pool of water, etc. There is no specific form.

36 thoughts on “Le Bateau-atelier”

  9. I board one of those every morning even though it looks like a white reclining chair in a living room and the river is flowing words. You craft the glide in such smooth pentameter the rhymed couplets pair like swans. So what am I doing here, gawking from the shore? Why else go to see a Monet than to can confirm it truly be done? Now, on the art of comments … (see Writing at Norfolk).

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