this Ekphrasis was written based upon this image "Woman in Swing" by Dora at cottagecore.com
poem submitted to "1502 Sept. 2026 Part 4x4" poetry contest, Brian Strand, sponsor, 9/21/2026
She drifts through the watercolor quiet of early autumn reverie, a woman woven from rust-lit silk and burgundy breath, swaying beneath a golden birch that breaks the afternoon into soft, shimmering fragments of desire. Her dress, a cascade of coppered longing~ flares like a quiet flame against the f a l l i n g leaves, each one a slow confession, each d e s c e n t a whispered footnote in the season’s gilded script. Around her, the woodland water keeps its calm, a mirror of maroon-stained dreams where reflections tremble with the fragile pulse of imagined devotion. She is the swing’s serene enchantress, graced by the drifting gold that gathers in her hair like a secret constellation. Even the birch seems to bow, its branches bending in a soft-spoken requiem for summers that learned how to let go. I watch her d r i f t~ a rust-colored muse in the watercolor’s warm illusion~ and feel the world loosen into a lucid lullaby, where longing becomes a gentle lantern and the afternoon d i s s o l v e s into amber-lit serenity. O autumn goddess of the painted realm, let me linger in your leaf-bright orbit, where devotion glimmers in the coppered quiet, and every falling leaf is a small, golden surrender to the dream you carry in your calm, ever-turning swing.
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