The Swan, No. 3 (Hilma af Klint)
Copyright © 2025 by Victoria Chang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
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Poppy Field
I never saw the woodpecker up close. But I saw its red
infections in the tree. Maybe after everyone dies, you
have to loop yourself to earth and hold on to different red
things. Sometimes you hold on to a woodpecker.
Sometimes the red poppies in the field. Happiness is not
certain. Neither is sadness. Only our thinking about them is.
2026
OBIT [Memory]
Memory—died August 3, 2015. The
death was not sudden but slowly over a
decade. I wonder if, when people die,
they hear a bell. Or if they taste
something sweet, or if they feel a knife
cutting them in half, dragging through
the flesh like sheet cake. The caretaker
who witnessed my mother’s death quit.
She holds the memory and images and
now they are gone. For the rest of her
life, the memories are hers. She said
my mother couldn’t breathe, then took
2017
Tree of Knowledge, No. 7B
I was supposed to be looking closely at the
paintings. How the rainbow-colored trunk looked
like a train track. How af Klint made these eight
Tree of Knowledge paintings in 1913, after
four years of not working, after 193 Paintings for
the Temple. How the rainbow track was different
2026