Sunday in the Park (With Me)

By Susan July 23, 2025

Thank you, Cleveland Museum of Art, for the hours and hours of respite in your spaces.

Cleveland friends: You know the Georges Seurat painting,
Sunday in the Park with George, that is in the museum?

Well, I wrote this poem, way back

Sunday at the Museum with Rembrandt:

Snow turned blackened crust
four months old and counting.
a magnet yearning for a mate.
respite from melancholy Sundays.

Kiss Renoir’s Romaine Lacaux.
check on Degas’ dancers
Van Gogh’s poplars at St. Remis
Monet’s garden at Giverny.

Wishing-well once magical.
mummies once formidable.
the Armor Court “don’t thrill me now.”
different passions beckon.

A Sunday date with Rembrandt and his rabbi.
tête-à-triosClose . . . close . . .
too close
warns the gray-haired guard.

Light out of darkness. darkness from light
talk to me, Master Rembrandt.
monochrome transcendence
spontaneous solitude, refined light
flame of inspiration fused into one.

Haunt me
rouse me.
comfort me.
reveal to me.

Surface cracks.
infinite dusk.
breathe in
exhale. wait. still.

Return to snow turned blackened crust
four months old and counting.

Rembrandt Self Portrait Leaning on a Stone Sill 1639

Rembrandt 1659 self-portrait

Take a minute and look at the brushstrokes under the eye.

Last updated on July 23, 2025

In 2006, researching for my last literature paper at Oxford, I stumbled onto the late 17th-century court of Queen Mary of Modena, consort to James II. I was intrigued because she had so many female writers in her court—rare for the 17th century. Before heading back to the states, I met with my professor, Peter McCullough, to discuss a book idea stemming from that research. Peter had stunned me with his compliment of my paper—“One of the most beautiful Bread Loaf papers I’ve read . . . The work of an artist by an artist.” He was encouraging about my book idea and later agreed to be one of my Beta readers. Rain Dodging follows my quest for a sense of Mary’s spaces, to breathe the same air, to imagine their lives, visiting palaces and manor houses in England and Scotland and exploring their sublime back roads. Rain Dodging is a kaleidoscope of memoir and mystery, a collage of images and events. As I travel through Britain, I take you on a journey through my life and into a 17th-century royal court. You'll watch the connections unfold, from tales of a troubled childhood to wild days of college and young adulthood, the music scenes in Los Angeles & Nashville, and to my growth as mother, teacher, writer, lover, and solo traveler.