THE LILY PAD, THE JAPANESE BRIDGE Painting by Claude Monet (1899); Poem by Sal Buttaci (1994)   Who could imagine what Monet was thinking when he took his brush to this! Ask him what inspired him  and he will no doubt lie, say "The Japanese Bridge" or "The lily pond: the way the lilies sit on the brown river" or "The mood I was in, the feeling  I h

THE CART: THE ROAD UNDER SNOW IN HONFLEUR Painting by Claude Monet, 1865; Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994 The road under snow we ought best not to complain about! Yet we do so every winter, don't we? You say the jostling ride hurts your back or the old horse is too slow or that I see so poorly I cannot avoid the rocks jutting in our path.   As for

    Painting by Auguste Renoir, 1876     Poem by Salvatore Buttaci, 1994 This is not the veil I had hoped to wear. You can take that for the God-honest truth! This one is black; the other was white. This is today: a time for mourning. That was long ago. How do you explain a life? Mine, that is. One summer the earth revolved  around the two of us. W