On the Artist Weathering a Storm
after Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee”
How often can a person’s faith
be tested? Rembrandt seems to know
about torment, as he looks us
in the eye amid the chaos
of his sacred lightning-singed sky.
One hand steadies a cap atop
his head. The other grips a line
for balance, though he seems unmoved
by what surrounds him, more attuned
to the viewers’ battle: our own
jagged seas of doubt. He appears
no help to the frantic men. Eyes
bulge. Bodies break against the wind.
All sense of the future and past
now a white-knuckled bargaining.
Their master recedes like a swell
of fair weather, his gaze, if not
calm itself, then brushed with calmness.
One disciple wretches over
a rail. The artist does not flinch.
NOTE: On March 18, 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was subject to perhaps the most notorious art robbery in history. Rembrandt’s only seascape, “Storm on the Sea of Galilee”, was among the treasures stolen.
The Wounded Angel
After Hugo Simberg
On their march to the Blind Girls’ School
or the Home for Cripples, two boys
carry a sickly child, her head
down, eyes bandaged, barely able
to brace herself on the stretcher.
Her feet hang. Her wings are worthless.
The procession walks slowly through
winter fields toward dusk. But it’s
the snowdrops in the angel’s hand
that get me. Who would have placed them
in her palm? The steel-eyed boy who
steadies his gaze as though he were
sighting a rifle? Or maybe
the one wanting to pick up speed
but already knows at his age
that miracles are never fair.
Robert Fillman is the author of The Melting Point (Broadstone Books, 2025), House Bird (Terrapin Books, 2022), and the chapbook, November Weather Spell (Main Street Rag, 2019). His poems have appeared in such journals as Gargoyle, Salamander, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Tar River Poetry. He teaches at Kutztown University.