Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 —
What he called the portrait of his mother.
Yet he named this seascape The Angry Sea.
Abstraction, anthropomorphization
Are how we seek out, how we discover
The single me among the countless we.
At first the crashing rollers were lovely,
Even, ordered, making room each for each,
Until they laved the unwelcoming beach.
Was it the ship that made the waves angry,
Or, to Whistler gave them a cause to be?
He flung himself into the sea and swam
And nearly drowned in the surge of “I am.”
